Thelonious Monk

Jon Faddis has had a long and illustrious career. At the tender age of  18, he joined Lionel Hampton’s Orchestra, then was lead trumpet in the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis orchestra. He also had stints with Charles Mingus. Renowned as a trumpeter with masterful command of an unparalleled range on the …

In the beginning there was jazz. A deviation from the conservative pathway of European musical tropes, jazz was America’s original counterculture. Largely defined by the ingenuity of its artist, it found structure in a lack thereof, improvisation its blueprint. With such an inherent flexibility, jazz engaged many a strange bedfellow, …

Ashley Khan is a journalist, music historian, producer, and adjunct professor at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. In addition to contributions to the New York Times, Rolling Stone, Down Beat, Jazz Times, and Mojo, Khan has authored Kind of Blue: The Making of the Miles Davis Masterpiece …

Wallace Roney is a Philadelphia born trumpeter who is an in demand player who has had lots of ups and downs in his career. Although showing promise early on, his professional career didn’t really take off until he was almost 30-years old. Miles Davis has always been Wallace Roney’s most …

Contemporary jazz keyboard player Alex Bugnon, nephew of trumpeter Donald Byrd, grew up going to the Montreux Jazz Festival in his hometown in Switzerland. He attended the Paris Conservatory of Music for two years, then moved to the U.S. and went to the Berklee School of Music, meanwhile performing as …

iRock Jazz provides music recommendations for Stylus, the first jazz discovery application for Spotify Stylus™, a music application specially designed for leading music streaming service Spotify, premiered  as a fun, easy and exciting way for listeners to explore and discover the best of classic and contemporary jazz from among an …

Grammy Award winning pianist Robert Glasper tells us who he is, why people describe him as the modern day Thelonious Monk and he take us behind the Black Radio 2 creative process.

Grammy Award winning  jazz saxophonist Gary Bartz first came to New York In 1958 to attend the Julliard Conservatory of Music. Just 17 years old, Gary couldn’t wait to come to the city to play and learn. “It was a very good time for the music in New York, at …

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 …

Two time Grammy nominee and Pew Fellow, Orrin Evans has been recognized as one of the most distinctive and inventive pianists of his generation. In a short span of time Orrin has earned the titles of pianist, composer, bandleader, teacher, producer and arranger. The New York Times described the pianist …

It may seem impossible to build a house out of jazz, but according to Melissa Walker, not only can jazz build a house, it can also build an entire community. The wife of Grammy-Award winning bassist Christian McBride, has a formidable curriculum vitae of her own. The sultry jazz vocalist …

Marc Cary’s name can be synonymous with the D.C. sound of music known as go-go. His music embodies a style that will capture the listener, connecting them to the sound. At the age of fourteen he became a member of the High Integrity Band, which played go-go music. He graduated …