There has always been a healthy restlessness to Elio Villafranca. When I spoke to him in February 2015 he was about to debut a new suite...
Editor’s Pick · Featured Album The record package itself for Cinque is modest, but oddly impressive; its black cover has the title and Mr Villafranca’s name...
Now this is something really special and it marks not simply a second disc for an iconic label, Resonance Records, which under the inspired hand of...
Editor Danilo Navas and New York Co-Editor Tomas Peña Discuss Elio Villafranca and The Jass Syncopators: Caribbean Tinge Live at Dizzy’s (Motema Music) TP: I attended...
There is an everlasting quality about Warren Wolf’s recording, Wolfgang. If the ingenious vibraphone virtuoso should at all be diffident about his achievement here it might...
The Legendary Apollo Theater Commissions the World Premiere of GRAMMY® Award-Winning Pianist Arturo O’Farrill’s “Afro Latin Jazz Suite” Featuring The Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra, Rudresh Mahanthappa,...
First, and probably most unique of all, was Evans’ capacity to “hear and discern” the sounds that swirled around his head. Here he in the sole...
It takes probably three or four bars into the first song, “Scorpio,” on pianist Donald Vega’s Resonance album Spiritual Nature for a magical spell to unfold....
Live behind the scenes videos from the Rising Jazz Stars Studios for Donald Vega’s recording Spiritual Nature (Resonance Records – August 2012). “It’s a dream come...
Donald Vega arrived in the U.S. from Nicaragua at the age of 14. He spoke no English (except two words: “Bud Powell”) but quickly won the...
The hypothesis that in Charlie “Bird” Parker’s music the cultures of the world collided may be new, even unheard of until now. The elemental polyrhythms of...