Kevin Whitehead
Kevin Whitehead is the jazz critic for NPR's Fresh Air with Terry Gross. Currently he reviews for The Audio Beat and Point of Departure.
Whitehead's articles on jazz and improvised music have appeared in such publications as Point of Departure, the Chicago Sun-Times, Village Voice, Down Beat, and the Dutch daily de Volkskrant.
He is the author of Play the Way You Feel: The Essential Guide to Jazz Stories on Film (2020), Why Jazz: A Concise Guide (2010), New Dutch Swing (1998), and (with photographer Ton Mijs) Instant Composers Pool Orchestra: You Have to See It (2011).
His essays have appeared in numerous anthologies including Da Capo Best Music Writing 2006, Discover Jazz and Traveling the Spaceways: Sun Ra, the Astro-Black and Other Solar Myths.
Whitehead has taught at Towson University, the University of Kansas and Goucher College. He lives near Baltimore.
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Born Sept. 27, 1924, Powell helped set the style for jazz piano after WWII. While earlier pianists played busy bass patterns, he helped establish a more fragmented, punctuating role for the left hand. -
Born in 1924 in Newark, N.J., Vaughan came up in the '40s, alongside bebop, a new jazz style she instantly took to. In the following decades, she proved to be one of the best singers of any genre.
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The tenor sax player came up in Chicago and toured in the '60s with Charles Mingus, Max Roach and Randy Weston. Jordan's forgotten album, Drink Plenty Water, mixes singers with a small ensemble.
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Threadgill's autobiography, written with Brent Hayes Edwards is called Easily Slip into Another World. His album, The Other One, is a three-movement composition written for a 12-piece ensemble.
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After decades in New York, Watson has returned to Kansas City. The core KC jazz values — a swinging beat, a personal style, and an earthy, bluesy sensibility — are firmly in place on this new album.
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Each player in this trio addresses the beat in a spontaneous way, without constant chaos. A casual romp like this session makes for breezy listening.
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Roach's album was recently named to the National Recording Registry, a roster of works deemed culturally, historically or aesthetically significant; We Insist! scores in all three categories.
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Coleman's first LPs from the late 1950s are newly available. They showcase Coleman's sound before he began making the records with his own bands that made him a controversial jazz star. -
Flute player Nicole Mitchell, cellist Tomeka Reid and drummer Mike Reed all came up on Chicago's new jazz scene about 20 years ago. Now they revisit their roots on ... and then there's this.
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On Feb. 5, 1953, Powell was uncommunicative face to face at the New York jazz club Birdland. But when he sat at the keys, it was a whole other story.
