The winner of the 2015 Montreux Guitar Competition, Pedro Martins was heavily featured on guitarist Kurt Rosenwinkel‘s “Caipi“, the first for his own Heartcore Records label, in 2017. The 25-year old Martins is now releasing his second album, a collection of thirteen Brazilian-flavored pop and rock songs with a heavy jazz input, not only from…
Following Danish Jazz singer Caecilie Norby ever since her 1995 Blue Note debut has always echoed my attitude towards repertoire. I think if you’re not choosing to record your own original material, it is utterly important to come up with the right combination of cover tunes and not simply an amalgamation of songs from the…
Just a few days after the legendary Michel Legrand left this earth, we have lost James Ingram who graced the Quincy Jones album “The Dude”, one of the best albums ever, with the two gorgeous ballads “Just Once” (written by Barry Mann and Cynthia Weill) and “One Hundred Ways” (written by Kathy Wakefield, Ben Wright…
Earlier today, the first 35 acts for this year’s North Sea Jazz Festival have been announced. We’re planning on visiting Rotterdam again for the weekend of July 12th to 14th. Confirmed are superstars such as Diana Krall, Bobby McFerrin, Jamie Cullum, and Burt Bacharach. Also on the agenda, man of the moment Kamasi Washington, Joshua…
The full programme has been announced earlier today after festival director Dieter Kosslick’s last programme press conference before Carlo Chatrian takes over in 2020. 17 movies will compete in this year’s main section and jury president Juliette Binoche and her team will present their prizes on February 16th. I already had the chance to see…
There simply can not be enough live music in town so here comes a very welcome new little festival at a location which is one of the nicest and charming in the city. Diversity and equality is the name of the game for Berlin Jazz Experiment, to be held May 31st to June 2nd at…
And here’s another great indie soul compilation which we’re also looking out for at the beginning of each year: Luxury Soul 2019 is another 3-CD box with 35 indie and modern soul tracks, with 21 tracks released last year or this year and the remainder going as far back as 1981 with a can’t-do-wrong classy…
Happy New Year from Gina and her crew. Gina has spent the holidays way out west in the middle of nowhere on the Dutch countryside with almost no silly, stupid fireworks. Just in time to cure the cold grey Berlin January, here comes the ninth edition of this epic Modern Soul meets Northern Soul series…
It could be the pop songs of the day, a veritable jazz standard, or a classy soul tune, whatever Nancy Wilson touched, became angelic. After almost 60 years in the business and dozens and dozens of timeless recordings, she left this world yesterday at age 81 after a long illness. She died at her home…
Not a lot of really interesting new records out lately, so I’m filling the gaps in my vinyl collection with the help of the brilliant Discogs online marketplace. I recently found two Lani Hall LPs there after reading James Gavin’s profile of the singer in the December JazzTimes magazine: the 1975 “Hello It’s Me” and…