Donate | NPR Shop | NPR Community | Login | Register
It's true: Bill Frisell wears glasses, dresses casually and is modest and soft-spoken in person. But instead of stepping into a phone booth to put on a cape, he straps on his trusty Fender Telecaster and strides onstage at the Kennedy Center's Terrace Theater with his trio.
()
Once upon a time, an NPR Music series called JazzSet With Branford Marsalis visited clubs, concerts and festivals across the country and around the world. Today, our founding host runs his own record label, and JazzSet visits the Marsalis Music Stage at Newport, where Chilean-born Claudia Acuna sets political folk songs to the sounds of jazz.
()
Saxophonist and MacArthur Fellow Miguel Zenon highlights his new CD, Esta Plena, and leads into the Vijay Iyer Trio, which performs selections from Historicity. Both hold up beautifully to repeated listening; hear selections from the two at Newport in Surround Sound for JazzSet.
()
It all began on Monday nights at the Visiones club in Greenwich Village, where a newcomer from Minnesota was leading a handsome band. Here, the Maria Schneider Orchestra spans 15 years of original, paradigm-shifting music at the 2009 Mary Lou Williams Women in Jazz Festival at the Kennedy Center.
()
Ambrose Akinmusire says, "A lot of people think I'm an over-achiever, but I don't believe there's such a thing." With a warm yet assertive tone, the trumpeter leads a quintet at the KC Jazz Club in a concert recorded by JazzSet.
()
Nascimento's miraculous voice is one gift. Brazilian music is another — passionate and in an innately beautiful language. It's his birthday on Oct. 26, so we celebrate with last year's celebration at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center, with Newark's Portuguese-speaking community understanding every word, the world-renowned Nascimento celebrates bossa nova pioneer Antonio Carlos Jobim.
()
Who is that singer? She's having fun with the Michigan State University Jazz Orchestra under director Rodney Whitaker at the Detroit Jazz Festival. After she sings, Dee Dee Bridgewater introduces the Juilliard Jazz Ensemble and Bennie Maupin's Dolphyana, free and outdoors in downtown Detroit on Labor Day Weekend 2009.
()To mark 70 years in business, the Blue Note record label put together an all-star ensemble and commissioned arrangements of key compositions. From a show recorded April 5, hear the burning-down-the-house highlights of The Blue Note 7's performance at the Kennedy Center.
()
Featuring Cohen on clarinet and saxophones, the Anzic Orchestra — a jazz band with a cello section — has played New York's Jazz Standard and subbed once for the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra at the Village Vanguard. Now on JazzSet, Anzic blows away the Kennedy Center crowd at the Mary Lou Williams Women in Jazz Festival. Competition winner Hailey Niswanger opens.
()
At Monterey, Cullum links Gene Kelly's "Singin' in the Rain" to Rihanna's "Umbrella," segues from Cole Porter to Jimi Hendrix, delivers a personal manifesto on a Charles Mingus riff, leaps off the piano into the air and never lets his audience down.
()
A Love Supreme, by John Coltrane and his powerful quartet, remains a towering and seemingly untouchable jazz classic. But the virtuosic genre-benders in the Turtle Island Quartet have done it justice, re-working the seminal album for strings and winning a Grammy for their trouble. They perform a live version on this week's JazzSet.
()
At the first University of Central Florida Jazz Festival, the sextet One for All gives UCF students a great demo of the three-horn-and-rhythm-section style made so popular by Art Blakey and His Jazz Messengers, who named their last CD One for All.
()
The superb acoustic music of young Colombian harpist Edmar Castaneda weaves Cuban son, Brazilian samba, and Spanish flamenco into his lovely pan-American jazz. Castaneda and four-mallet vibesman Joe Locke perform at the Tanglewood Jazz Festival in the Berkshires on Aug. 29, 2008.
()
We're al fresco for New Orleans' Marlon Jordan Quartet, at the annual Summer of Jazz series in scenic Glenwood Springs, Colo. The group improvises with a Miles-and-Trane vibe while dogs, kids, baseball-tossers and Frisbee-throwers groove to the music.
()
On a stage adorned with roses, the Mary Lou Williams Women in Jazz Festival honors Sheila Jordan for a lifetime of service. The innovative vocalist shares songs and stories from the Kennedy Center, with the young Russian-born singer Sophie Milman showcasing her talents on stage.
()