iRock Jazz LIVE Archives

Music saw singer/songwriter/producer, KEM, through the darkest moments in his life as a child, which is where his love of music began. After high school, his life took a downward turn, and he eventually found himself in and out of drug rehabilitation centers and homeless shelters. Music was his solace …

(the) avant-garde soulful Pianist/DJ/Producer delivers his lifetime of journeys to different musical ports in a concise package, seamlessly… transporting not just in genre but in emotion and spirit.” – Huffington Post I’m a half-Japanese, half-New Zealander musician, based in Los Angeles since 2008 after spending a decade in London. That’s …

Surrounded by music since she was a small child, twenty-three year old singer, songwriter and composer Chrisette Michele has been blessed with an old soul and this Long Island bred songwriter and vocalist has a deep appreciation for the harmonic foundations that includes gospel and jazz. “I did my first …

Born and raised in Israel, Uri Gurvich won the Jazz Player of the Year competition in Israel before relocating to Boston to attend the prestigious Berklee College of Music studying under Joe Lovano. He has played at prestigious jazz festivals and venues in Europe, Japan and the US, including Lincoln …

Jessy J has a gangbuster career already, scoring back-to-back hits, #1 Song of the Year and a #1 Billboard Album in 2011, five years after making her debut she’s back with her highly anticipated Self Produced album entitled Second Chances. Jessy J burst onto the contemporary jazz scene in 2008, …

“One of the most identifiable and consistently enjoyable singers in underground soul.” – Jazziz Magazine “Maysa’s voice is as smooth and as rich as chocolate…its pure, perfect tone is gorgeous and caresses with a languorous sensuality.”-Blues And Soul Magazine Maysa is the kind of singer who takes hold of a …

Jazz pianist, keyboardist, producer and composer Marc Cary holds tight to his roots in Washington, D.C.’s go-go music scene, but they represent only one more element to fuse with the many other musical forms he explores. Cary’s interests run from Indian classical to Malian music to hip-hop. He started his …

Though Paul Jackson Jr. never got to meet or work with Wes Montgomery, one of his chief guitar influences, he has forged professional relationships with all the others who touched his formative years, including Earl Klugh, George Benson, Ray Parker Jr., Al McKay and Lee Ritenour. Since breaking into the Los Angeles …

“There isn’t a handy term or genre for the music that Kneebody creates. It’s a band thoroughly acquainted with 1960s free-bop, 1970s jazz rock, 1990s hip-hop and postmillennial indie rock; along with classical postminimalism. (I’m leaving something out, I’m sure.) Whatever the terminology, this group has an audience…” – New York Times …

The Jazz & Democracy Project® manifests a hypothesis that Wesley J. Watkins, IV, Ph.D. has been investigating since he was an undergraduate: a music-centered curriculum with genuine links to the other subject areas can increase student identification with school, impact academic engagement, and have a subsequent positive effect on overall academic …

ETIENNE CHARLES: Recording Artist, Composer, Arranger, Assistant Professor of Jazz Studies, Michigan State University Over its century-plus history, jazz has forged its shape-shifting identity by encompassing a rainbow of musical dialects in an improvisation-infused setting. While jazz’s potency launched into popular appeal based on the integration of the European classical …

Winner of the Kennedy Center’s Mary Lou Williams Jazz Piano Competition and named by Wynton Marsalis as one of his 2011 “Who’s Got Next: Jazz Musicians to Watch,” pianist-composer Helen Sung is blazing her own path – as an Asian-American artist, she bridges diverse worlds with a singular vision and …