Kevin Whitehead
Kevin Whitehead is the jazz critic for NPR's Fresh Air with Terry Gross. Currently he reviews for The Audio Beat and Point of Departure.
Whitehead's articles on jazz and improvised music have appeared in such publications as Point of Departure, the Chicago Sun-Times, Village Voice, Down Beat, and the Dutch daily de Volkskrant.
He is the author of Play the Way You Feel: The Essential Guide to Jazz Stories on Film (2020), Why Jazz: A Concise Guide (2010), New Dutch Swing (1998), and (with photographer Ton Mijs) Instant Composers Pool Orchestra: You Have to See It (2011).
His essays have appeared in numerous anthologies including Da Capo Best Music Writing 2006, Discover Jazz and Traveling the Spaceways: Sun Ra, the Astro-Black and Other Solar Myths.
Whitehead has taught at Towson University, the University of Kansas and Goucher College. He lives near Baltimore.
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Schulz, who died in 2000, spoke in 1990 about his iconic Peanuts comic strip. Plus, jazz critic Kevin Whitehead talks about pianist Vince Guaraldi, who created the music for A Charlie Brown Christmas.
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From the beginning, Thumbscrew has had a thing for off-kilter rhythms and shifting accents. This new album is filled with idiosyncratic tunes — music befitting of the idiosyncratic band.
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After decades in New York, Watson has returned to Kansas City. The core KC jazz values — a swinging beat, a personal style, and an earthy, bluesy sensibility — are firmly in place on this new album.
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Nobody sounds like Waldron, a fact proved by a new 2-CD recording the artist made during a 1978 solo concert. Searching in Grenoble is a good introduction to the pianist's compelling sound.
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In 1965, Lewis' trio had a crossover hit with The 'In' Crowd, a jazz recording they made in a Washington, D.C. nightclub, which reached the pop charts. Lewis died Sept. 12.
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The Funky Freqs came up playing the post-Corea jazz-rock style known as free funk — music with fewer complicated melodies and more earthy grooving. Their new album is Hymn of the Third Galaxy.
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On Valse Sinistre, Drummond's ride-cymbal beat is lively, varied and full of passing cross-rhythms — the sound of a musician fully engaged and in the habit of attentive listening.
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Each player in this trio addresses the beat in a spontaneous way, without constant chaos. A casual romp like this session makes for breezy listening.
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Garchik's album started as a socially-distanced session which was then mixed — sometimes seamlessly, sometimes brazenly. It's music for an era of frequent disruption — and prized moments of calm.
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Though he's been a New Yorker for over a decade, Virelles remains preoccupied with the rich, rhythmically charged music of his native Cuba. His new album shows where he's been — and where he's going.