The Journal of Jazz & Improvised Music — features, reviews, interviews, and deep dives into jazz culture.https://jazzdiggs.com/en-usJazz Diggs 2026editors@jazzdiggs.com (Jazz Diggs Editorial)tech@jazzdiggs.com (Jazz Diggs Tech)60https://jazzdiggs.com/favicon.svghttps://jazzdiggs.comhttps://jazzdiggs.com/articles/twin-cities-jazz-festival-guide/https://jazzdiggs.com/articles/twin-cities-jazz-festival-guide/The Twin Cities Jazz Festival runs every June in Minneapolis—free, with national headliners and 20,000 attendees. I've covered it for four decades.Tue, 31 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMTCultureGenaro Vasquezhttps://jazzdiggs.com/articles/twin-cities-jazz-venues-history/https://jazzdiggs.com/articles/twin-cities-jazz-venues-history/I've spent forty years watching Twin Cities jazz rooms close. Rossi's, Jazzmines, the Times—most are gone. What survived tells you what sustains a scene.Tue, 31 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMTCultureGenaro Vasquezhttps://jazzdiggs.com/articles/wayne-shorter-feature/https://jazzdiggs.com/articles/wayne-shorter-feature/Wayne Shorter wrote 'Footprints,' 'Speak No Evil,' and 'Nefertiti.' He played with Miles and co-founded Weather Report. But the compositions are the legacy.Tue, 31 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMTFeaturesGenaro Vasquezhttps://jazzdiggs.com/articles/women-in-jazz-history/https://jazzdiggs.com/articles/women-in-jazz-history/Mary Lou Williams, Melba Liston, Lil Hardin, and Alice Coltrane shaped jazz. The standard history barely mentions them.Tue, 31 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMTHistoryGenaro Vasquezhttps://jazzdiggs.com/articles/artists-quarter-st-paul/https://jazzdiggs.com/articles/artists-quarter-st-paul/The Artist's Quarter ran 37 years across three locations. Kenny Horst ran it on no salary. DownBeat called it one of the 150 best jazz venues in the world.Sat, 28 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMTCultureGenaro Vasquezhttps://jazzdiggs.com/articles/captain-jack-mcduff-minneapolis/https://jazzdiggs.com/articles/captain-jack-mcduff-minneapolis/Jack McDuff died in Minneapolis in 2001 at 74. He spent his last 11 years here in a career renaissance. He gave George Benson his first break.Sat, 28 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMTCultureGenaro Vasquezhttps://jazzdiggs.com/articles/dakota-jazz-club-minneapolis/https://jazzdiggs.com/articles/dakota-jazz-club-minneapolis/The Dakota has been open on Nicollet Mall since 1985. It outlasted every other major jazz club in Minneapolis. DownBeat and USA Today have both recognized it.Sat, 28 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMTCultureGenaro Vasquezhttps://jazzdiggs.com/articles/debbie-duncan-twin-cities-jazz/https://jazzdiggs.com/articles/debbie-duncan-twin-cities-jazz/Debbie Duncan came to Minneapolis in 1984 for six weeks and stayed 36 years. Won Jazz Vocalist of the Year so often the MMA retired her from it. Died 2020.Sat, 28 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMTCultureGenaro Vasquezhttps://jazzdiggs.com/articles/emporium-of-jazz-mendota/https://jazzdiggs.com/articles/emporium-of-jazz-mendota/The Emporium of Jazz ran in Mendota, MN from 1966 to 1991. The Minnesota Historical Society named it one of 150 things that made Minnesota.Sat, 28 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMTCultureGenaro Vasquezhttps://jazzdiggs.com/articles/how-minneapolis-built-jazz-scene/https://jazzdiggs.com/articles/how-minneapolis-built-jazz-scene/Minneapolis shouldn't have a jazz scene this deep. No touring route, brutal winters, mid-sized population. I was there. Here is why it happened.Sat, 28 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMTCultureGenaro Vasquezhttps://jazzdiggs.com/articles/irv-williams-mr-smooth/https://jazzdiggs.com/articles/irv-williams-mr-smooth/Irv Williams arrived in Minneapolis in 1942, turned down three jazz legends to stay, and played here until his death at 100 in 2019. Mr. Smooth.Sat, 28 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMTCultureGenaro Vasquezhttps://jazzdiggs.com/articles/kbem-jazz-88-minneapolis/https://jazzdiggs.com/articles/kbem-jazz-88-minneapolis/KBEM Jazz 88 broadcasts 24 hours of jazz from Minneapolis. Run by the public school system. No other station quite like it anywhere.Sat, 28 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMTCultureGenaro Vasquezhttps://jazzdiggs.com/articles/leigh-kamman-jazz-image/https://jazzdiggs.com/articles/leigh-kamman-jazz-image/Leigh Kamman hosted The Jazz Image on MPR from 1973 to 2007. Broadcasting since 1939. I produced his show for years.Sat, 28 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMTCultureGenaro Vasquezhttps://jazzdiggs.com/articles/maria-schneider-minnesota-jazz/https://jazzdiggs.com/articles/maria-schneider-minnesota-jazz/Maria Schneider grew up in Windom, MN, studied with Gil Evans, and became one of jazz's most Grammy-decorated composers. Minnesota's best-kept secret.Sat, 28 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMTCultureGenaro Vasquezhttps://jazzdiggs.com/articles/peterson-family-minnesota-jazz/https://jazzdiggs.com/articles/peterson-family-minnesota-jazz/Minnesota's most productive musical dynasty. Five children went national. Prince, Bob Dylan, Stevie Nicks, and Fleetwood Mac all worked with Petersons.Sat, 28 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMTCultureGenaro Vasquezhttps://jazzdiggs.com/articles/the-bad-plus-twin-cities/https://jazzdiggs.com/articles/the-bad-plus-twin-cities/The Bad Plus came from Minneapolis and became one of the most covered jazz groups of the 2000s. The New York Times wrote about them. Columbia signed them.Sat, 28 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMTCultureGenaro Vasquezhttps://jazzdiggs.com/articles/twin-cities-jazz-society-jazz-notes/https://jazzdiggs.com/articles/twin-cities-jazz-society-jazz-notes/I served on the Jazz Society board in the 1980s and edited Jazz Notes, the weekly publication that held our scene together before the internet.Sat, 28 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMTCultureGenaro Vasquezhttps://jazzdiggs.com/articles/chicago-jazz-clubs-guide/https://jazzdiggs.com/articles/chicago-jazz-clubs-guide/Chicago pulled jazz north during the Great Migration and made it harder, faster, and louder. These are the clubs where that sound still lives.Wed, 25 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMTCultureGenaro Vasquezhttps://jazzdiggs.com/articles/new-orleans-jazz-clubs-guide/https://jazzdiggs.com/articles/new-orleans-jazz-clubs-guide/New Orleans invented jazz and never stopped playing it. Here are the clubs and rooms where the music still sounds like it belongs.Wed, 25 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMTCultureGenaro Vasquezhttps://jazzdiggs.com/articles/new-york-jazz-clubs-guide/https://jazzdiggs.com/articles/new-york-jazz-clubs-guide/New York did not invent jazz, but it gave jazz a career. The Village Vanguard, Blue Note, and Smalls are still open. Here is how to navigate the scene.Wed, 25 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMTCultureGenaro Vasquezhttps://jazzdiggs.com/articles/twin-cities-jazz-guide/https://jazzdiggs.com/articles/twin-cities-jazz-guide/Minneapolis and St. Paul sustain a full-time jazz radio station, a world-class club, and a free festival. I spent forty years inside it.Wed, 25 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMTCultureGenaro Vasquezhttps://jazzdiggs.com/articles/best-jazz-guitar-albums/https://jazzdiggs.com/articles/best-jazz-guitar-albums/The jazz guitar canon runs from Charlie Christian to Julian Lage. These fifteen albums trace the full arc.Thu, 19 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMTCultureGenaro Vasquezhttps://jazzdiggs.com/articles/bill-evans-village-vanguard-review/https://jazzdiggs.com/articles/bill-evans-village-vanguard-review/Bill Evans, Scott LaFaro, and Paul Motian played at the Village Vanguard on June 25, 1961. What they recorded redefined the piano trio. LaFaro died ten days...Thu, 19 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMTReviewsGenaro Vasquezhttps://jazzdiggs.com/articles/chick-corea-farewell-performance-review/https://jazzdiggs.com/articles/chick-corea-farewell-performance-review/Chick Corea's last concerts were never meant to be farewells. They became the most tender document of a fifty-year career.Thu, 19 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMTReviewsGenaro Vasquezhttps://jazzdiggs.com/articles/chick-corea-farewell-review/https://jazzdiggs.com/articles/chick-corea-farewell-review/Chick Corea played two solo concerts in October 2020. Four months later he was gone. Forever Yours captures what he left in the room.Thu, 19 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMTReviewsGenaro Vasquezhttps://jazzdiggs.com/articles/coltrane-quartet-history/https://jazzdiggs.com/articles/coltrane-quartet-history/Between 1961 and 1965, the John Coltrane Quartet made the most intense and spiritually ambitious music in jazz. Then it dissolved. Here is how it happened.Thu, 19 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMTHistoryGenaro Vasquezhttps://jazzdiggs.com/articles/detroit-jazz-strata-history/https://jazzdiggs.com/articles/detroit-jazz-strata-history/In 1969, pianist Kenny Cox founded Strata Records in Detroit. The label lasted five years and produced some of the most uncompromising jazz of its era. Its...Thu, 19 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMTHistoryGenaro Vasquezhttps://jazzdiggs.com/articles/jazz-piano-guide/https://jazzdiggs.com/articles/jazz-piano-guide/Ten piano recordings that trace jazz from Art Tatum's stride to Keith Jarrett's solo improvisation. A guided listening path, not a ranked list.Thu, 19 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMTCultureJames Tannerhttps://jazzdiggs.com/articles/joel-ross-black-church-feature/https://jazzdiggs.com/articles/joel-ross-black-church-feature/Joel Ross grew up in Chicago's Black church. On Gospel Music, he stops translating that experience into jazz and lets the two become the same thing.Thu, 19 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMTFeaturesJames Tannerhttps://jazzdiggs.com/articles/joel-ross-gospel-music-review/https://jazzdiggs.com/articles/joel-ross-gospel-music-review/Joel Ross has always drawn from Chicago's Black church. On Gospel Music, he stops drawing from it and walks directly inside.Thu, 19 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMTReviewsGenaro Vasquezhttps://jazzdiggs.com/articles/joel-ross-interview/https://jazzdiggs.com/articles/joel-ross-interview/Joel Ross structured Gospel Music around the biblical narrative — creation, fall, salvation. On Blue Note, that takes nerve.Thu, 19 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMTFeaturesGenaro Vasquezhttps://jazzdiggs.com/articles/julian-lage-interview/https://jazzdiggs.com/articles/julian-lage-interview/Julian Lage was identified as a prodigy at eight. Three decades later, he built a quartet where the guitar is not the hero.Thu, 19 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMTFeaturesGenaro Vasquezhttps://jazzdiggs.com/articles/julian-lage-writing-fast-feature/https://jazzdiggs.com/articles/julian-lage-writing-fast-feature/Julian Lage composed Scenes from Above in twenty-minute sprints. The method sounds reckless. The results sound inevitable. That tension is the point.Thu, 19 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMTFeaturesGenaro Vasquezhttps://jazzdiggs.com/articles/julian-lage-scenes-from-above-review/https://jazzdiggs.com/articles/julian-lage-scenes-from-above-review/Scenes From Above is not about Julian Lage proving anything. It's about four musicians in a room, deciding together what matters.Thu, 19 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMTReviewsGenaro Vasquezhttps://jazzdiggs.com/articles/thelonious-monk-feature/https://jazzdiggs.com/articles/thelonious-monk-feature/Monk's wrong notes were structurally correct. Understanding how requires listening to what his left hand was doing while everyone was distracted by his right.Thu, 19 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMTFeaturesGenaro Vasquezhttps://jazzdiggs.com/articles/theo-croker-sullivan-fortner-review/https://jazzdiggs.com/articles/theo-croker-sullivan-fortner-review/Theo Croker and Sullivan Fortner threw out a covers album and recorded fourteen spontaneous duets. The result is the most honest jazz record of early 2026.Thu, 19 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMTReviewsGenaro Vasquezhttps://jazzdiggs.com/articles/tomeka-reid-dance-skip-hop-review/https://jazzdiggs.com/articles/tomeka-reid-dance-skip-hop-review/Tomeka Reid's fourth quartet album is five compositions that make you want to move. The playing is as demanding as anything in free jazz. It just happens to...Thu, 19 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMTReviewsGenaro Vasquezhttps://jazzdiggs.com/articles/what-is-bebop/https://jazzdiggs.com/articles/what-is-bebop/Bebop was not a genre. It was a declaration of independence — from dance floors, from entertainment, from the idea that jazz was background music.Thu, 19 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMTHistoryGenaro Vasquezhttps://jazzdiggs.com/articles/sonny-rollins-saxophone-colossus-review/https://jazzdiggs.com/articles/sonny-rollins-saxophone-colossus-review/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.Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMTReviewsGenaro Vasquezhttps://jazzdiggs.com/articles/shabaka-hutchings-feature/https://jazzdiggs.com/articles/shabaka-hutchings-feature/Shabaka Hutchings dissolved three bands, gave away his saxophone, and restarted with a Japanese flute he could barely play. What followed is extraordinary.Thu, 12 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMTFeaturesGenaro Vasquezhttps://jazzdiggs.com/articles/robin-kelley-interview/https://jazzdiggs.com/articles/robin-kelley-interview/Robin D.G. Kelley wrote the definitive Monk biography. His approach — follow the labor, the politics, the money — changes how jazz history reads.Tue, 10 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMTFeaturesGenaro Vasquezhttps://jazzdiggs.com/articles/what-to-listen-after-kind-of-blue/https://jazzdiggs.com/articles/what-to-listen-after-kind-of-blue/Kind of Blue is the most recommended entry point in jazz and the most common place to stop. There is a great deal more on the other side of it.Mon, 09 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMTCultureGenaro Vasquezhttps://jazzdiggs.com/articles/new-york-jazz-scene-2025/https://jazzdiggs.com/articles/new-york-jazz-scene-2025/The Village Vanguard still exists. So does a Brooklyn scene that did not exist twenty years ago, and a generation of musicians who grew up in both.Wed, 04 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMTFeaturesGenaro Vasquezhttps://jazzdiggs.com/articles/miles-davis-comeback-tutu/https://jazzdiggs.com/articles/miles-davis-comeback-tutu/Tutu is the most controversial Miles Davis record after On the Corner. It is also the most misunderstood record of his late career.Fri, 27 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMTReviewsGenaro Vasquezhttps://jazzdiggs.com/articles/miles-davis-wynton-marsalis-feud/https://jazzdiggs.com/articles/miles-davis-wynton-marsalis-feud/Miles Davis thought Wynton Marsalis was playing old music in fancy clothes. Marsalis thought Miles had abandoned jazz. They were both partly right.Thu, 26 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMTCultureGenaro Vasquezhttps://jazzdiggs.com/articles/melissa-aldana-filin-review/https://jazzdiggs.com/articles/melissa-aldana-filin-review/Aldana came to record a ballads album. Rubalcaba had a better idea. What followed is one of the most surprising pivots in recent jazz history.Tue, 24 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMTReviewsGenaro Vasquezhttps://jazzdiggs.com/articles/sun-ra-feature/https://jazzdiggs.com/articles/sun-ra-feature/Sun Ra built a myth, a band, and a philosophy. The myth was absurd. The band was serious. The philosophy is one of the most original produced by American music.Sat, 21 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMTFeaturesGenaro Vasquezhttps://jazzdiggs.com/articles/miles-davis-second-great-quintet/https://jazzdiggs.com/articles/miles-davis-second-great-quintet/Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter, Tony Williams: four musicians who had never quite fit together. With Miles Davis, they changed jazz.Fri, 20 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMTFeaturesGenaro Vasquezhttps://jazzdiggs.com/articles/matana-roberts-interview/https://jazzdiggs.com/articles/matana-roberts-interview/Matana Roberts has spent over a decade on Coin Coin — twelve chapters tracing Black American history through family and free jazz.Tue, 17 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMTFeaturesGenaro Vasquezhttps://jazzdiggs.com/articles/miles-davis-influence/https://jazzdiggs.com/articles/miles-davis-influence/Miles Davis's bands were finishing schools. Coltrane, Hancock, Shorter, Chick Corea — every one left with something they could not have learned elsewhere.Thu, 12 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMTFeaturesGenaro Vasquezhttps://jazzdiggs.com/articles/lee-morgan-sidewinder-review/https://jazzdiggs.com/articles/lee-morgan-sidewinder-review/The Sidewinder was a commercial hit in a genre that had stopped having them. It achieved that without compromising a single note.Mon, 09 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMTReviewsGenaro Vasquezhttps://jazzdiggs.com/articles/learning-jazz-guide/https://jazzdiggs.com/articles/learning-jazz-guide/Most beginner's guides to jazz tell you what to listen to. This one tells you how to listen — which is the more useful and more neglected question.Wed, 04 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMTCultureGenaro Vasquezhttps://jazzdiggs.com/articles/miles-davis-discography-guide/https://jazzdiggs.com/articles/miles-davis-discography-guide/Miles Davis made over sixty studio albums. The question of where to start is real. The answer depends entirely on what you want from the music.Sat, 31 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMTCultureGenaro Vasquezhttps://jazzdiggs.com/articles/jazz-record-collecting-guide/https://jazzdiggs.com/articles/jazz-record-collecting-guide/Jazz record collecting is obsessive and expensive. Both reputations are warranted. The third — that it rewards obsessiveness — is most warranted of all.Tue, 27 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMTCultureGenaro Vasquezhttps://jazzdiggs.com/articles/jazz-omnibus-review/https://jazzdiggs.com/articles/jazz-omnibus-review/Not a history of jazz, but something rarer: how serious people kept showing up to write about music that refused to stay still.Wed, 21 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMTReviewsGenaro Vasquezhttps://jazzdiggs.com/articles/jazz-in-film-feature/https://jazzdiggs.com/articles/jazz-in-film-feature/Films about jazz tend to get the music wrong in the same way: they mistake suffering for authenticity, and technical mastery for artistic vision.Tue, 13 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMTCultureGenaro Vasquezhttps://jazzdiggs.com/articles/jazz-education-today/https://jazzdiggs.com/articles/jazz-education-today/The conservatories teach jazz as a discipline now. The question is whether what they teach produces musicians, or produces people who can pass the exam.Tue, 06 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMTFeaturesGenaro Vasquezhttps://jazzdiggs.com/articles/jazz-at-lincoln-center-interview/https://jazzdiggs.com/articles/jazz-at-lincoln-center-interview/Wynton Marsalis spent thirty-five years building the largest jazz institution in the world. The debates it sparked define how we argue about jazz.Mon, 29 Dec 2025 00:00:00 GMTFeaturesGenaro Vasquezhttps://jazzdiggs.com/articles/jazz-and-hip-hop-connection/https://jazzdiggs.com/articles/jazz-and-hip-hop-connection/Sampling was not hip-hop producers taking from jazz. It was the same musical culture extending itself into a new technological environment.Sat, 20 Dec 2025 00:00:00 GMTCultureGenaro Vasquezhttps://jazzdiggs.com/articles/jazz-2010s-renaissance/https://jazzdiggs.com/articles/jazz-2010s-renaissance/In 2015, Kamasi Washington released The Epic, Kendrick Lamar released To Pimp a Butterfly, and jazz became the most urgent music in the world.Sat, 13 Dec 2025 00:00:00 GMTHistoryGenaro Vasquezhttps://jazzdiggs.com/articles/international-jazz-feature/https://jazzdiggs.com/articles/international-jazz-feature/Jazz is American music in origin. It has been something else for decades — a global practice with regional traditions as distinct as any national music.Fri, 05 Dec 2025 00:00:00 GMTCultureGenaro Vasquezhttps://jazzdiggs.com/articles/ornette-coleman-five-spot-history/https://jazzdiggs.com/articles/ornette-coleman-five-spot-history/Miles Davis heard Ornette Coleman's quartet at the Five Spot and said, in his customarily blunt way: 'He just came and f***ed up everybody.' That was the point.Mon, 01 Dec 2025 00:00:00 GMTHistoryGenaro Vasquezhttps://jazzdiggs.com/articles/horace-silver-song-for-my-father-review/https://jazzdiggs.com/articles/horace-silver-song-for-my-father-review/Song for My Father was a commercial hit at a time when jazz had no commercial hits. It earned that hit without compromising anything that matters.Thu, 27 Nov 2025 00:00:00 GMTReviewsGenaro Vasquezhttps://jazzdiggs.com/articles/free-jazz-today-feature/https://jazzdiggs.com/articles/free-jazz-today-feature/The reports of free jazz's death were exaggerated in 1965 and remain exaggerated now. The question is who is making it and where to find them.Fri, 21 Nov 2025 00:00:00 GMTFeaturesGenaro Vasquezhttps://jazzdiggs.com/articles/francis-wolff-photography/https://jazzdiggs.com/articles/francis-wolff-photography/Francis Wolff photographed almost every Blue Note session from 1938 to 1971. He never considered himself a photographer. He was wrong.Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 GMTFeaturesGenaro Vasquezhttps://jazzdiggs.com/articles/miles-davis-restless-genius/https://jazzdiggs.com/articles/miles-davis-restless-genius/No figure in jazz occupies quite the same gravitational position as Miles Davis. He didn't just play music—he warped the field around him.Mon, 10 Nov 2025 00:00:00 GMTFeaturesGenaro Vasquezhttps://jazzdiggs.com/articles/don-was-interview/https://jazzdiggs.com/articles/don-was-interview/Don Was came to Blue Note by accident. Fourteen years later, he has turned the label's founding philosophy into a modern operation.Sat, 08 Nov 2025 00:00:00 GMTFeaturesGenaro Vasquezhttps://jazzdiggs.com/articles/irreversible-entanglements-review/https://jazzdiggs.com/articles/irreversible-entanglements-review/There is no irony in Irreversible Entanglements. On Protect Your Light, the Philadelphia collective makes free jazz that insists on meaning it.Wed, 05 Nov 2025 00:00:00 GMTReviewsGenaro Vasquezhttps://jazzdiggs.com/articles/coltrane-ascension-review/https://jazzdiggs.com/articles/coltrane-ascension-review/Ascension is not a noise record. It is a record about how many voices can speak simultaneously and still be heard. The answer, Coltrane found, is eleven.Sun, 02 Nov 2025 00:00:00 GMTReviewsGenaro Vasquezhttps://jazzdiggs.com/articles/jazz-club-irreplaceable/https://jazzdiggs.com/articles/jazz-club-irreplaceable/Streaming has given us everything except the one thing that matters most. You can hear every record ever made. What you cannot do is be in the room.Sat, 01 Nov 2025 00:00:00 GMTCultureGenaro Vasquezhttps://jazzdiggs.com/articles/esperanza-spalding-interview/https://jazzdiggs.com/articles/esperanza-spalding-interview/Esperanza Spalding has won four Grammys, taught at Harvard, and built a career that refuses to sit still. What she does next is always the question.Tue, 28 Oct 2025 00:00:00 GMTFeaturesGenaro Vasquezhttps://jazzdiggs.com/articles/cecile-mclorin-salvant-interview/https://jazzdiggs.com/articles/cecile-mclorin-salvant-interview/Cécile McLorin Salvant has won four Grammys for Best Jazz Vocal Album. What makes her remarkable is how suspicious she remains of her own fluency.Sat, 25 Oct 2025 00:00:00 GMTFeaturesGenaro Vasquezhttps://jazzdiggs.com/articles/blue-note-tone-poet-series/https://jazzdiggs.com/articles/blue-note-tone-poet-series/Don Was went into the Blue Note vaults and heard a master of Mode for Joe. He said it would bring tears to your eyes. The Tone Poet series is why.Sat, 18 Oct 2025 00:00:00 GMTCultureGenaro Vasquezhttps://jazzdiggs.com/articles/blue-note-records-history/https://jazzdiggs.com/articles/blue-note-records-history/They insisted on two things above all else: real takes, with the musicians warmed up and ready; and proper mastering time, with no corners cut.Wed, 15 Oct 2025 00:00:00 GMTHistoryGenaro Vasquezhttps://jazzdiggs.com/articles/blue-note-1500-series/https://jazzdiggs.com/articles/blue-note-1500-series/The Blue Note 1500 series ran from 1955 to 1958. It produced forty records. Almost all of them are essential. No label has matched that ratio before or since.Fri, 10 Oct 2025 00:00:00 GMTFeaturesGenaro Vasquezhttps://jazzdiggs.com/articles/berkshires-jazz-music-inn/https://jazzdiggs.com/articles/berkshires-jazz-music-inn/Before Newport, before Lincoln Center, there was Lenox, Massachusetts — where Ornette Coleman found the audience that would send him to New York.Fri, 03 Oct 2025 00:00:00 GMTFeaturesGenaro Vasquezhttps://jazzdiggs.com/articles/arooj-aftab-review/https://jazzdiggs.com/articles/arooj-aftab-review/Vulture Prince is dedicated to Arooj Aftab's late brother. It does not perform grief — it inhabits it, and finds something luminous there.Sat, 27 Sep 2025 00:00:00 GMTReviewsGenaro Vasquezhttps://jazzdiggs.com/articles/archie-shepp-fire-music-review/https://jazzdiggs.com/articles/archie-shepp-fire-music-review/Archie Shepp's Fire Music is not difficult music. It is demanding music — demanding that you pay attention to what it is actually saying.Fri, 19 Sep 2025 00:00:00 GMTReviewsGenaro Vasquezhttps://jazzdiggs.com/articles/ambrose-akinmusire-interview/https://jazzdiggs.com/articles/ambrose-akinmusire-interview/Ambrose Akinmusire won the Monk Competition in 2007 and has spent the years since proving that discipline and restlessness are the same thing.Sat, 13 Sep 2025 00:00:00 GMTFeaturesGenaro Vasquezhttps://jazzdiggs.com/articles/on-the-corner-history/https://jazzdiggs.com/articles/on-the-corner-history/On the Corner was savaged on release. Critics later praised it for everything they had hated. The music did not change — the context did.Tue, 09 Sep 2025 00:00:00 GMTHistoryGenaro Vasquezhttps://jazzdiggs.com/articles/akinmusire-honey-winter-stone-review/https://jazzdiggs.com/articles/akinmusire-honey-winter-stone-review/Ambrose Akinmusire lost his mother while making this album. He didn't write around it. What came out is among the most honest jazz records in years.Fri, 05 Sep 2025 00:00:00 GMTReviewsGenaro Vasquezhttps://jazzdiggs.com/articles/ten-contemporary-albums/https://jazzdiggs.com/articles/ten-contemporary-albums/Jazz didn't stop evolving when the records you know were made. Ten albums from the past fifteen years that prove it.Sun, 31 Aug 2025 00:00:00 GMTCultureGenaro Vasquezhttps://jazzdiggs.com/articles/ten-blue-note-albums/https://jazzdiggs.com/articles/ten-blue-note-albums/Blue Note released hundreds of albums. Forty appear on every essential list. Here are ten of those — and what to listen for in each.Fri, 22 Aug 2025 00:00:00 GMTCultureGenaro Vasquezhttps://jazzdiggs.com/articles/streaming-changed-jazz/https://jazzdiggs.com/articles/streaming-changed-jazz/Streaming gave jazz wider distribution than it has ever had. Jazz's audience did not grow proportionally. Something more complicated happened instead.Thu, 14 Aug 2025 00:00:00 GMTCultureGenaro Vasquezhttps://jazzdiggs.com/articles/rudy-van-gelder-studio/https://jazzdiggs.com/articles/rudy-van-gelder-studio/Rudy Van Gelder recorded more of the jazz canon than any other engineer. He built his first studio in his parents' living room in Hackensack, New Jersey.Tue, 05 Aug 2025 00:00:00 GMTHistoryGenaro Vasquezhttps://jazzdiggs.com/articles/reid-miles-designer/https://jazzdiggs.com/articles/reid-miles-designer/Reid Miles designed almost 500 Blue Note covers between 1956 and 1967. He was paid fifty dollars each. He reportedly preferred classical music.Sun, 27 Jul 2025 00:00:00 GMTFeaturesGenaro Vasquezhttps://jazzdiggs.com/articles/ornette-coleman-shape-of-jazz-review/https://jazzdiggs.com/articles/ornette-coleman-shape-of-jazz-review/Ornette Coleman's 1959 debut on Atlantic doesn't sound like what people say free jazz sounds like. That's the first thing worth knowing about it.Sat, 19 Jul 2025 00:00:00 GMTReviewsGenaro Vasquezhttps://jazzdiggs.com/articles/miles-first-great-quintet/https://jazzdiggs.com/articles/miles-first-great-quintet/The rhythm section was almost an afterthought. The two horn players were the tension. And the tension was the whole point.Fri, 11 Jul 2025 00:00:00 GMTFeaturesGenaro Vasquezhttps://jazzdiggs.com/articles/mary-halvorson-feature/https://jazzdiggs.com/articles/mary-halvorson-feature/Mary Halvorson's guitar is immediately identifiable from the first note. No other guitarist in contemporary jazz sounds anything like her.Wed, 02 Jul 2025 00:00:00 GMTFeaturesGenaro Vasquezhttps://jazzdiggs.com/articles/makaya-mccraven-feature/https://jazzdiggs.com/articles/makaya-mccraven-feature/Makaya McCraven records live improvisation and edits it into something nobody in the room played. The result is called jazz. It is also something else.Mon, 23 Jun 2025 00:00:00 GMTFeaturesGenaro Vasquezhttps://jazzdiggs.com/articles/language-of-jazz-glossary/https://jazzdiggs.com/articles/language-of-jazz-glossary/Jazz has a vocabulary that insiders use casually and newcomers find baffling. Here is what the words mean — and what to listen for.Sat, 14 Jun 2025 00:00:00 GMTCultureGenaro Vasquezhttps://jazzdiggs.com/articles/kind-of-blue-history/https://jazzdiggs.com/articles/kind-of-blue-history/Miles Davis walked into Columbia's 30th Street Studio in March 1959 with no written arrangements and a set of scales. What came out never stopped selling.Fri, 06 Jun 2025 00:00:00 GMTHistoryGenaro Vasquezhttps://jazzdiggs.com/articles/kamasi-washington-epic-feature/https://jazzdiggs.com/articles/kamasi-washington-epic-feature/Kamasi Washington's 2015 debut ran for three hours. Nobody asked him to shorten it. That fact tells you almost everything about what he was trying to do.Thu, 29 May 2025 00:00:00 GMTFeaturesGenaro Vasquezhttps://jazzdiggs.com/articles/duke-ellington-sacred-concerts/https://jazzdiggs.com/articles/duke-ellington-sacred-concerts/Duke Ellington's Sacred Concerts represent a late-career pivot toward music explicitly intended for spiritual use — his most important work.Tue, 27 May 2025 00:00:00 GMTFeaturesGenaro Vasquezhttps://jazzdiggs.com/articles/jazz-civil-rights/https://jazzdiggs.com/articles/jazz-civil-rights/Jazz was always political. It was built by people whose humanity was being actively contested — and the music made that argument in public.Wed, 21 May 2025 00:00:00 GMTHistoryGenaro Vasquezhttps://jazzdiggs.com/articles/in-a-silent-way-history/https://jazzdiggs.com/articles/in-a-silent-way-history/Recorded in February 1969, edited from hours of tape, released that summer. Nobody knew what to call it. Miles did not wait for a name.Mon, 12 May 2025 00:00:00 GMTHistoryGenaro Vasquezhttps://jazzdiggs.com/articles/how-to-listen-free-jazz/https://jazzdiggs.com/articles/how-to-listen-free-jazz/Free jazz has a reputation for being difficult. That reputation is wrong. The music isn't hard to hear — it's hard to hear the right way.Sat, 03 May 2025 00:00:00 GMTCultureGenaro Vasquezhttps://jazzdiggs.com/articles/five-cities-that-made-jazz/https://jazzdiggs.com/articles/five-cities-that-made-jazz/Jazz didn't come from one place. It came from five — each of which heard what the previous city had built and decided to do something else with it.Sun, 27 Apr 2025 00:00:00 GMTCultureGenaro Vasquezhttps://jazzdiggs.com/articles/bitches-brew-history/https://jazzdiggs.com/articles/bitches-brew-history/Miles Davis recorded Bitches Brew in August 1969 with no written parts. He invented a genre in three days. He did not ask for permission.Sat, 19 Apr 2025 00:00:00 GMTHistoryGenaro Vasquezhttps://jazzdiggs.com/articles/alice-coltrane-spiritual-journey/https://jazzdiggs.com/articles/alice-coltrane-spiritual-journey/Alice Coltrane lost her husband in 1967. Instead of stepping back, she stepped deeper into the music he was reaching for.Tue, 15 Apr 2025 00:00:00 GMTFeaturesGenaro Vasquezhttps://jazzdiggs.com/articles/art-blakey-jazz-messengers/https://jazzdiggs.com/articles/art-blakey-jazz-messengers/Art Blakey ran the Jazz Messengers for thirty-five years. The roster of musicians who passed through reads like a who's who of jazz across five decades.Fri, 11 Apr 2025 00:00:00 GMTHistoryGenaro Vasquezhttps://jazzdiggs.com/articles/albert-ayler-feature/https://jazzdiggs.com/articles/albert-ayler-feature/Albert Ayler's saxophone was the most extreme thing jazz had heard. It was also rooted in gospel and folk melody. Both came from the same place.Fri, 04 Apr 2025 00:00:00 GMTFeaturesGenaro Vasquezhttps://jazzdiggs.com/articles/a-love-supreme-history/https://jazzdiggs.com/articles/a-love-supreme-history/John Coltrane recorded A Love Supreme in a single session on December 9, 1964. He was thirty-eight years old. He never made another record quite like it.Thu, 27 Mar 2025 00:00:00 GMTHistoryGenaro Vasquezhttps://jazzdiggs.com/articles/charlie-parker-bebop-revolution/https://jazzdiggs.com/articles/charlie-parker-bebop-revolution/In the 1940s, Charlie Parker took swing music and remade it. What emerged was something that sounded like the future.Mon, 10 Mar 2025 00:00:00 GMTHistoryGenaro Vasquez