jazz Archive

In the era before rock ‘n’ roll, pop music was for adults. And while adult pop continued as a force through the ’60s – witness the careers of Tom Jones, Johnny Mathis and Engelbert Humperdinck as well as Frank Sinatra’s continued run of top 40 hit singles – the category was largely moribund by the

The last name may sound familiar: Pianist and singer Freddy Cole is, in fact, the youngest brother of the late Nat “King” Cole, the jazz musician who scored more than 100 pop hits during his lifetime. But Freddy Cole — immortalized in the award-winning 2006 documentary film The Cole Nobody Knows — is no also-ran.

Five-time Grammy Award nominee Ottmar Liebert is German-born. His music is rooted in the traditions of Spain. And he lives in the American Southwest. Somehow, those disparate elements combine to make guitar-based music that has one foot in tradition, the other in modern, pop-style accessibility. Though he’s a technically accomplished and ambitious musician, Liebert says

Every so often – pretty often, in fact – I find a stack of CDs has accumulated on my desk. They’ve made the cut as albums deemed worthy of sharing with my readers. In the space of just one hundred words, I endeavor to convey what’s noteworthy or even special about these releases. Each of

Asheville-based trumpeter Justin Ray has been a member of pop singer Michael Bublé’s band for 15 years. After a long string of tours around the world, Ray decided that he’d create some new arrangements of classic tunes from the big band era, with the ultimate goal of getting Bublé to use those arrangements in his