The 6th Autumn Edition of the Exit Zero Jazz Festival kicks off in Cape May, NJ, November 9-12, 2017. As with every jazz festival there’s something to please everyone. Here are some acts that caught Nextbop’s attention. You can purchase tickets for the festival here. Should be a fun couple of days. Gregory Porter Saturday, November 11, MusicConnects Stage at Schmidtchen … [Read more...]
Ben Williams Set to Release ‘Coming of Age’ (EPK)
Winner of the 2009 Monk International Bass Competition, Ben Williams is set to release his sophomore album Coming of Age April 21st on Concord Records. The album features Williams’ band Sound Effect, comprised of Marcus Strickland (tenor and soprano saxophone), Matthew Stevens (guitar), Christian Sands (piano and Fender Rhodes), Masayuki “Big Yuki” Hirano (synths and Fender … [Read more...]
Nextbop/The Art of Cool Project’s Favorite Jazz Albums of 2013, #20-12
One major reason why I so enjoy this time at the end of the year is not only to reassess what this past year has looked like musically, not only to be able to look at a multitude of truly great works from great artists and say stuff like "oh, wow, Darcy James Argue gave us another album this year" or "hey, Wayne Shorter came back to Blue Note" and "how do David Weiss and Point … [Read more...]
Anthony Dean-Harris’ Favorite Jazz Albums of 2013
I had a discussion with some folks at KRTU about the importance of year-end lists as moments of assessment, of looking at this moment in time in a century-year-old genre of music and say this is where the music was at this point of the narrative. At a time where we're analyzing the culture at large at a rate as fast as the lives we're living in it, it's sometimes necessary to … [Read more...]