Yesterday we unveiled Nextbop's Best Jazz Albums of 2019, which was compiled by our staff as a whole. Today, we continue our Season of Lists with Editor-in-Chief Anthony Dean-Harris' Favorite Jazz Albums of 2019.There's something kind of lovely about the lack of one major cohesive idea present in the genre of jazz at the moment. The idea of what the music can be is larger … [Read more...]
Stream Kneebody’s “When It All Comes Down” featuring Gretchen Parlato from New Album ‘Chapters’
Kneebody, the innovative jazz group made up of trumpeter Shane Endsley, saxophonist Ben Wendel, keyboardist Adam Benjamin and the extraordinary Nate Wood taking the simultaneous roles of drummer and bassist, is back with their seventh album, Chapters, coming October 18th to Edition Records.“The title references the episodic nature of life and the way our personal stories b … [Read more...]
Bassist Billy Mohler Returns to Jazz with Debut ‘Focus’
Bassist and composer Billy Mohler graduated from the Berklee College of Music and then proceeded to join the Monk Institute, as one of only five musicians, where he studied and performed with jazz superstars Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, Clark Terry, and Jimmy Heath, just to name a few. But jazz wasn’t in the cards for Mohler who found unexpected success with rock band The C … [Read more...]
Jazz Group Kneebody Covers Rapper Cardi B’s “Bodak Yellow” (Video)
You’ve all heard “Bodak Yellow” by now, the 2017 hip-hop anthem that propelled rapper Cardi B to superstardom. With its dark and hypnotic vamp and its aggressive and provocative lyrics by a woman, it’s no mystery why it landed the number 24 spot on the year-end Billboard Hot 100, right above Childish Gambino’s “Redbone”. But what would happen if “Bodak Yellow”, the epitome of mo … [Read more...]
fOUR – ‘X.IT’ (Album Review)
It would seem natural that all the work multi-instrumentalist Nate Wood has been doing under his solo project, fOUR, would be leading to an album. Wood has been releasing videos of his one take performances, playing new songs and every instrument, over the last year, blowing minds all the while. Now he's put the songs all together for the album X.IT, out Friday.As we've … [Read more...]