It’s fair to say that among fusion aficionados, John McLaughlin is the father of jazz-rock guitar. His experiments with complex harmony, Eastern scales, and chromaticism in conjunction with the rigs ...

“You could argue there are two kinds of musicians,” the late Jack Bruce once told Bass Player. “The first type plays one thing to perfection and is satisfied. The other type is always searching.” A ...

Back in the late sixties, when rock musicians started to explore more complex things, the music became at the same time more interesting and, well, complicated at the same time. It was the advent of ...

Anthony Jackson, one of the most versatile recorded bassists in music history and creator of the “contrabass guitar,” died in Staten Island.

When faced with the prospect of replacing an irreplaceable member of the band, Kneebody found a singular solution to the conundrum. Over the past two decades the Grammy-nominated group established its ...

Cal Tjader’s 1976 Latin jazz-rock fusion album Amazonas reissued on 180g vinyl offers lush vibes, killer solos, and essential listening. When I first started collecting Cal Tjader records, ...

On March 16, at 7:30 p.m., six-time Grammy nominee Mike Stern will perform with Leni Stern (both on guitars), Bob Franceschini (saxophone), Noam Tanzer (bass) and Juan Chiavassa (drums). Using the ...

This take on early Seventies archetypes, then, doesn’t cleave to a standard template. Nonetheless, songs sport shifts in time signatures, very Jan Akkerman-come-John McLaughlin guitar and jazzy drums.

The decision to place another festival right on top of Jazzfest highlighted how much has been flipped upside-down in jazz over the past 20 years. By Giovanni Russonello Back in 2005 — when the first ...

As 2023 winds down, I gaze in awe upon a particularly robust stack of jazz- and improv-oriented releases. It would be easier to compile a list of my 30 or 40 favorites, but there’s only so much space.

San Antonio native Mike Dillon is a musical innovator and provocateur whose punk-jazz hybrid is virtuosic, intense and, most of all, groovy. As a sideman, the ace vibraphonist has collaborated with ...