Will Layman

1 week ago | popmatters.com | Will Layman

Yikes, Too Out of Your Head / Screwgun Alto saxophonist and composer Tim Berne has been a vital and ubiquitous figure in “downtown” New York creative music for more than 40 years. He arrived in the city to study with Julius Hemphill, a hero and key influence. Berne’s music, made in solo projects, collaborative bands, and as a side player across all those years, has always reflected a combination of R&B feeling, out-jazz freedoms, and careful compositional detail.

1 month ago | popmatters.com | Will Layman

Bluer Than Blue: Celebrating the Life of Lil Hardin Armstrong Outside in Music Pianist Caili O’Doherty has been recording as a leader since 2015, just two years after she graduated from the Berklee College of Music. Teaching and touring the world followed, but she may have just come into her own in the last several years. Since 2018, she has been developing a musical and educational project around celebrating the life of Lil Hardin Armstrong.

2 months ago | popmatters.com | Will Layman

Fly Mack Avenue The young vocalist Michael Mayo has a malleable, nimble instrument that presents many possibilities. Growing up in Los Angeles, his dad sang and played saxophone with bands you love, and his mom sang harmonies professionally. But he was also educated in jazz at the New England Conservatory and the Monk (now Hancock) Institute. Would he become a jazz singer or try his hand at popular music?

Dec 9, 2024 | popmatters.com | Will Layman

This was another year of riches in jazz and creative music, with barriers between the tradition and the avant-garde melting away. A thriving global scene of brilliant musicians playing “mainstream” post-bop is out there, of course, but it is not retro or at war with newer structures and bolder flavors.

Aug 12, 2024 | popmatters.com | Will Layman

New Moon in the Evil AgeCuneiformEnsemble Volcanic Ash: To March Is To LoveCuneiformI have lived in the Washington DC area for 42 years, an area hardly thought of as a hub of creative music. We are next door to Baltimore, which has a scene, and within striking distance of a weekend in New York, which still packs more jazz into one city than any other. But Washington DC is, in fact, cooking. I don’t write often enough about the musicians who live just minutes from my house.