Patrick Jarenwattananon

Just southeast of the Virginia Commonwealth University campus in Richmond, Va., lies a compact neighborhood called Oregon Hill. Historically, it's been a (white) working-class part of town, affordable for students and various bohemian types. Recording engineer Lance Koehler was drawn to the place when he moved to Richmond from New ...

The trio of Joe Dyson (drums), Max Moran (bass) and Conun Pappas (piano) met in New Orleans' performing-arts high school, and have all gone on to careers in music. Together, they've worked as Donald Harrison's rhythm section before they could legally drink, and in 2012 released a self-titled debut album ...

The cultural center 92Y Tribeca closes this summer after five years, but not before one more double-bill from The Checkout: Live.

Clarinetist and saxophone player Don Byron has a way of homing in on a departed artist's legacy and transforming it with intelligence and adventure. Having already dedicated ...

Among the vestment racks, satchel purveyors and art galleries of New York's SoHo neighborhood lies a small merchant unlike its neighbors. It's called The Evolution Store, and it peddles, um, natural-history collectibles. You know, preserved insects, taxidermy, skulls and bones, remnants of marine creatures. It's as if a ...

We jazz fans tend to filter through a lot of names. For every Sonny Rollins or Wes Montgomery on the cover of an album, there might be two, three, four, five, eight, 14 more musicians backing him or her. Slowly, we begin to string together the works of these sidemen, ...

Among jazz musicians, especially in New York City, pianist Kenny Barron is considered an institution. He spent years in bands led by the likes of Dizzy Gillespie, Yusef Lateef and Stan Getz, and brings that wisdom to every note. He's put out dozens of albums, continues to write ...

Mulgrew Miller, whose supple touch and thorough command made him a leading jazz pianist, died early Wednesday. His death was related to a stroke he suffered a week earlier, according to saxophonist David Demsey, coordinator of jazz studies at William Paterson University in Wayne, N.J., where Miller served ...

Our friends at Deceptive Cadence, NPR Music's classical blog, are celebrating the 100th anniversary of The Rite of Spring all this week. You'd be well-advised to wander on over there and check it out.

When I first heard about their plan, I immediately thought about Charlie Parker. Bird ...

A 100-year-old ballet, composed by a Russian for a French audience, has become something of a jazz standard.

Igor Stravinsky's orchestral score for The Rite of Spring has been interpolated on record by musicians like Ornette Coleman, Alice Coltrane and Hubert Laws. Many, many more knew the Rite, ...

Ever since he started becoming one of the best alto saxophone players in the world, Miguel Zenón has drawn influence from his upbringing in Puerto Rico. Folk melodies, forms and rhythms have inspired many of his technically astounding yet immediately gratifying works. So it makes sense that he's ...

Subway entertainers are a mixed bag, but in the arts mecca of New York City, they're often overqualified — so much so that bands and other musical acts need to audition to even set up underground. And those are just the "official" performers.

Gregory Porter has the ...

The band Sexmob specializes in a distinct strain of deconstructionist improvised music: jazz that aims at fun by bouncing off the walls. The quartet has tackled James Bond music, rock covers, Duke Ellington, the Macarena and exotica, plus originals from leader Steven Bernstein. The antic trumpeter, who brings ...

Drummer Allison Miller, a go-to choice for jazz heavies and arena-level singer-songwriters alike, has made time to cultivate her own working band in the past few years. Boom Tic Boom features some of her favorite female instrumentalists in pianist Myra Melford and violinist Jenny Scheinman, as well as ...

Comparisons have always helped me appreciate jazz. An artist plays a tune fast; another does it as a ballad. A trumpeter finishes his solo, and a saxophonist takes that closing phrase and morphs it in a different direction. A musician revisits a composition years later with a new arrangement and ...

The composer Darcy James Argue has a little bit of the archetypal indie rocker in him. He's a white guy from Canada who moved to Brooklyn and started a band there. His new album is filled with deliberate suggestions of dance-punk; of Eastern European brass bands and carnival ...

This week — when many of us at NPR rushed to file our U.S. federal income-tax returns, then moved to a new headquarters — I'm reminded of a moment in jazz history. Namely, the mid-1940s, when a new style called bebop came into popularity.

As a recent

The drummer Jeff Ballard has a band called Fairgrounds. Well, he doesn't have a band as much as he has lots of bands, and knows lots of people to fill them — which might be expected of someone who has been a drummer for Chick Corea, Ray Charles and Brad ...

The 12th official Jazz Appreciation Month began when April did. But today, the Smithsonian Museum of American History, which founded the JAM campaign, kick started its own celebration with a series of performances, discussions and ceremonies.

A morning gathering for invited guests was highlighted by the official delivery ...

Every year, an all-star assemblage of today's jazz musicians called the SFJAZZ Collective picks a different all-time-great jazz composer to feature. The band then applies its own arrangements to that composer's tunes.

This season, it's pianist Chick Corea, whose "Spain" proves a barnstorming choice to close out the opening-night concert ...

At 66, the jazz trumpeter Tom Harrell is as busy as ever: His current band has released five excellent albums since 2007 alone. (It performed for this concert series in 2009.) He's so prolific that he's been writing and arranging music for other ensembles all the ...