Jazz

On the grief, softness, and spiritual mania of L’Rain.

Reissued for the first time after fifty years, the Black Unity Trio’s rare and explosive free jazz album Al-Fatihah still resonates with the sounds of solidarity amid a scene of intense political struggle.

Two sound artists on noise, fractals, Bach, Cecil Taylor, the new 7 PM ritual, and whether we still have use for the word improvisation.

The free jazz saxophonist on new realities for experimental music.

The improvisor and composer contemplates polyphonic pathways and reaching past the self.

Cauleen Smith tangles the past with figures from African American histories, Afrofuturism, Radical Jazz, and alternative futures.

Alvin Ailey’s Jamar Roberts on pain, joy, and choreographing to John Coltrane.

“I didn’t want to paint figuratively. I didn’t want something that was overtly referencing the social issues around me, but I wanted to find a way to describe them. How do you internalize this? How do you make a form that forces a painting to be an experience that is not necessarily easy to see, handle, or look at?”

The percussionist combines martial arts, herbalism, acupuncture, and technology to concoct a healing potion equal parts ancient tradition and pioneering experimentation.

Featuring selections by Jem Cohen, Keith Connolly, Britton Powell, Alan Courtis, Byron Westbrook, and more.

A selection of recent and reissued music by Elysia Crampton, Brother Ah, Anom Vitruv, C-Schulz, and Frans Zwartjes

Palimpsests and invocation in Marjorie Welish’s So What So That

Music that never was in Nathaniel Mackey’s Late ArcadeDavid Hobbs

“If someone hands over their repertory theater group to you, what are you going to do with them?”

“I don’t want to mention names, but there are several black artists that would like to shoot me today because they weren’t in that show. Some of them are dead, but the ones that aren’t dead still give me a lot of bullshit every time I see them.”

We tend to forget that it was an artist, Nam June Paik, who coined the term “electronic superhighway.” It synthesizes some of the most intriguing aspects of how art, digital media, and language intersect in today’s global culture.

Whether you’re drawing a straight line or zig-zagging through the history of American Minimalist music, there is one person you’re bound to meet.

“I think that creative improvisation music models the democratic principle. Heads of state and legislative bodies could learn a lot from this practice.”

“I’m glad that the work is still proving elusive enough to resist attempts to gather it all up in a critical hamper or net.”

“I was doing some plumbing work for a living and picked up a piece of pipe, blew into it, and it created a very good sound. So, I began building instruments.”