Phillip Lutz

1 week ago | inquirer.com | Phillip Lutz

What is the Philly sound in jazz? There is no one answer, but part of one lies in Philadelphia drummers’ singular sense of sonic misdirection. That, in any case, is the conclusion of Johnathan Blake, a Philly-born-and-raised drumming powerhouse and, as the son of the late violinist John Blake, a scion of the city’s jazz royalty. “I think there’s this element of the Philly sound where you think we’re in a hurry to get somewhere, but we’re not,” he said.

2 weeks ago | downbeat.com | Phillip Lutz

Interview, From the Magazine, Branford Marsalis Quartet By Phillip Lutz   I  May. 20, 2025 Branford Marsalis was on the road again. Coffee cup in hand, the saxophonist — sporting a gray hoodie and a look of resignation — was waking up to a Zoom screen on a late-winter morning in yet another town: Ann Arbor, Michigan, the latest stop on a rolling tour that this year alone will take him to at least 24 states, seven countries and the District of Columbia.

1 month ago | downbeat.com | Phillip Lutz

News, From the Magazine, Rondi Charleston, Fred Hersch By Phillip Lutz   I  Apr. 29, 2025 Projects produced during the pandemic are hardly in short supply. But few are as pointed, or as poignant, as Suspended In Time–A Song Cycle, a sequence of seven songs with words by Rondi Charleston and music by Fred Hersch.

2 months ago | downbeat.com | Phillip Lutz

By Phillip Lutz   I  Apr. 8, 2025 On Tuesday, April 8, tenor saxophonist Javon Jackson will bring to the Village Vanguard a tribute to his late performing partner, poet Nikki Giovanni. For the Vanguard, it will recall a bygone era when the club, and many other spots throughout Greenwich Village, regularly served as venues where poets and jazz musicians mixed.

2 months ago | downbeat.com | Phillip Lutz

News, Vijay Iyer, Wadada Leo Smith By   I  Apr. 1, 2025 On March 20, the night before the release of Defiant Life, the new Vijay Iyer-Wadada Leo Smith duo album from ECM, the label was throwing what their invitation termed a “private listening party” at Bang & Olufsen, the high-end electronics store on Madison Avenue in New York. Fully nine years had elapsed since the duo’s first release, A Cosmic Rhythm With Each Stroke.