The J.V.C. Jazz Festival, which rolls through town every June, is an oddly redundant event (isn’t New York City a nonstop jazz festival?), but it does offer a concentrated dose of all-star bands that come around only rarely-which is to say, two or three times a year-at classy venues like Carnegie Hall. The big draws Read More
For the past 15 years, the major jazz labels have been relying on the middle-of-the-road tastes of a silent majority of jazz fans that is so silent, it doesn’t in fact exist. Check Soundscan Inc.’s sales charts and you’ll notice that, in most instances, only a relative handful of people are actually buying Verve or Read More
Clarinetist Don Byron is the bizarro-world version of Wynton Marsalis. So powerful is the force field around Mr. Marsalis, he generates not only worshipers but his own antimatter: jazz peers like Mr. Byron who can’t help but define themselves in opposition to him. Both in their late 30′s, Mr. Byron was still studying at the Read More
