The Feeling Music: Melissa Aldana and the Cuban Tradition
The most quietly radical Blue Note album in years—and it starts with a word that translates as feeling.
Sonny Rollins: Saxophone Colossus (1956)
Saxophone Colossus was recorded in a single afternoon in 1956. Rollins was twenty-five. The record has not been surpassed in the tenor saxophone tradition.
Shabaka Hutchings: After the Saxophone
Shabaka Hutchings dissolved three bands, gave away his saxophone, and restarted with a Japanese flute he could barely play. What followed is extraordinary.
Robin D.G. Kelley: Jazz History Is Always Political
Robin D.G. Kelley wrote the book on Thelonious Monk. He argues jazz history only makes sense when you follow the labor, the politics, and the money.
"The music is the teacher. You have to be willing to be the student every single time you sit down to play."— Wayne Shorter
Miles Davis: Tutu (1986)
Tutu is the most controversial Miles Davis record after On the Corner. It is also the most misunderstood record of his late career.
Lee Morgan: The Sidewinder (1963)
The Sidewinder was a commercial hit in a genre that had stopped having them. It achieved that without compromising a single note.
