A pleasant sense of unpredictability has crept into the 2017-2018 South Florida jazz season, as younger, rising singers and players (Gregory Porter, Jon Batiste) and gifted female vocalists and instrumentalists (Tierney Sutton, Anat Cohen) dot the landscape, especially south of Palm Beach County. And even some of the more recurrent acts, like the Marsalis brothers — … [Read more...]
Bobby Thomas Jr. steps out from the shadow of Weather Report
Weather Report became the preeminent jazz/fusion band in history for a variety of reasons during its 1970-1986 tenure, chiefly its constant members, keyboardist Joe Zawinul (1932-2007) and saxophonist Wayne Shorter, both alumni of trumpeter Miles Davis’ bands. But the additional band members recruited by those two co-founders may have proven as important. Those included … [Read more...]