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The country has a rich, original relationship to jazz, with American techniques layered into regional traditions and rhythms. Explore 50 years of recordings picked by musicians, poets and writers. We’ve [...]

Byline: Isabelia Herrera, Jon Pareles and Giovanni Russonello A group of older Cuban musicians recorded some of their favorite songs in 1996, and the album became an unlikely blockbuster. How [...]

Byline: Giovanni Russonello In ensembles big and small, the prolific musician uses sound to make the world's complexities a little more graspable. Whether she's playing solo piano or leading one [...]

Byline: Giovanni Russonello Over the past 50 years, the music has become entrenched in academic institutions. As a result, it's often inaccessible to, and disconnected from, many of the very [...]

A master of the French horn, Mr. Northern was adept at both classical music and jazz. As a bandleader, he was devoted to what he called ''sound awareness.'' Robert Northern, [...]

The musician shares the movies, podcast, book and music that top her list of cultural essentials. With plans to release two albums in the first half of the year alone, [...]

The last surviving member of that landmark album's sextet, he was a master of understatement, propelling his bandmates with a quiet persistence. Jimmy Cobb, a jazz drummer whose propulsive ride [...]

We're often taught to think of jazz's history as a cavalcade of great men and their bands, but from its beginnings the music was often in the hands of women. [...]

The father of Wynton and Branford Marsalis and a prominent performer and educator, he succumbed to complications of the coronavirus. This obituary is part of a series about people who [...]

Initially dismissed by some as a Miles Davis imitator, Mr. Roney, who has died of coronavirus complications, emerged as a major musician in his own right. This obituary is part [...]

For the better part of five decades, he was the baritone saxophonist and linchpin of one of the most idiosyncratic and influential ensembles in jazz. Danny Ray Thompson, who spent [...]

LOGAN RICHARDSON AND IMMANUEL WILKINS AT THE JAZZ GALLERY (Friday, 7:30 and 9:30 p.m.) Two young saxophonists of bright, perfervid attack and deep assurance, Richardson (above) and Wilkins have a [...]

If jazz is looking to reinvent itself -- or catch its breath and take stock of how much it already has in the past 10 years or so -- the [...]

Playing with Coltrane and leading his own groups, the pianist's indelible style stood on its own. The pianist McCoy Tyner's impact on music is usually explained through his relationship to [...]

JEFF PARKER AND THE NEW BREED AT LE POISSON ROUGE (Wednesday, 8 p.m.) It's easiest to talk about Parker (above) -- a guitarist based in Los Angeles by way of [...]

Programs featuring the work of Charlie Parker and John Coltrane bookend more than two dozen different two-night engagements. Jazz at Lincoln Center's 33rd season will include appearances from a wide [...]

Programs featuring the work of Charlie Parker and John Coltrane bookend more than two dozen different two-night engagements. Jazz at Lincoln Center's 33rd season will include appearances from a wide [...]

She was not just a master musician, singer and dancer; she was also a teller of tall tales whose interviews could be as much a performance as her stage act. [...]

MWENSO & THE SHAKES AT NATIONAL SAWDUST (Thursday, 8 p.m.) The vocalist Michael Mwenso is up to the task of running what's nearly a full-on performance revue of the sort [...]

BOBBY WATSON AND HORIZON AT DIZZY'S CLUB (Wednesday and Thursday, 7:30 and 9:30 p.m.) Since his extended stint in Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers that began over 40 years ago, Watson [...]

A reimagining of his final album by the drummer and producer Makaya McCraven is another step toward a contemporary reckoning with his powerful oeuvre. When the drummer and producer Makaya [...]

RAFIQ BHATIA AT NATIONAL SAWDUST (Wednesday, 8 p.m.) It's not enough to call Bhatia (above) a guitarist and leave it at that, just like it's insufficient to refer to his [...]

JOE LOVANO AND DAVE DOUGLAS SOUND PRINTS AT THE VILLAGE VANGUARD (Through Sunday, 8:30 and 10:30 p.m.) Two leading voices in jazz since the 1980s, the trumpeter Douglas (above) and [...]

The dozens of categories include many musicians worth discovering. Listen to our critics' picks here. Burna Boy [Video: Watch on YouTube.] Although Burna Boy's ''African Giant'' is nominated for best [...]

Mr. Heath, whose compositions became part of the midcentury jazz canon, found new prominence in middle age as a co-leader of a band with his two brothers. Jimmy Heath, a [...]

WINTER JAZZFEST AT VARIOUS LOCATIONS (Through Jan. 18) Establishing itself as a gathering of eminent stars and an opportunity for new talents to break through, this festival is bigger than [...]

GRETCHEN PARLATO AT THE JAZZ GALLERY (Friday and Saturday, 7:30 and 9:30 p.m.) Few vocalists have as distinctive a sound as Parlato (right), whose sibilant, sighing soprano and querying, half-spoken [...]

PHAROAH SANDERS AT THE IRIDIUM (Dec. 27-29, 8:30 and 10:30 p.m.) A paragon of spiritual jazz since the 1960s, when he was in some of John Coltrane's last ensembles, Sanders, [...]

CHRISTIAN MCBRIDE AND INSIDE STRAIGHT AT THE VILLAGE VANGUARD (Through Sunday, 8:30 and 10:30 p.m.) With his quintet, Inside Straight, this masterful bassist (above) makes sense of a broad lineage [...]

Esperanza Spalding upset Justin Bieber at the Grammys, #MeToo shook the scene and Jason Moran made giant leaps. A look back at how the music moved forward. At the end [...]

'DIASPORA SONGS' AT CARNEGIE HALL (Friday, 8 p.m.) The Beninese vocalist Angélique Kidjo curated this major concert, and put the trumpeter Terence Blanchard (above) in charge of its musical direction. [...]

Evgeny Pobozhiy, 30, took home a $30,000 prize and a guaranteed contract with Concord Records -- along with earning jazz's highest honor for a rising musician. What was long the [...]

TERRI LYNE CARRINGTON AND SOCIAL SCIENCE AT LE POISSON ROUGE (Saturday, 8 p.m.) ''Waiting Game,'' the new album from Carrington (above), pulls together the various aspects of her identity: as [...]

The techniques he developed with Manfred Eicher, the founder of the ECM label, had a major influence on the recordings of Pat Metheny, Keith Jarrett and many others. Jan Erik [...]

NUBLU JAZZ FESTIVAL AT NUBLU 151 (Through Nov. 17) Though it's slightly off the beaten path, Nublu 151 has become recognized by music fans as one of the better standing [...]

Drawn to an instrument that sounded exotic to him, he became one of the most prominent classical musicians in India. Kadri Gopalnath was a youngster growing up in a village [...]

MICHELE ROSEWOMAN AND NEW YOR-UBA AT ZINC BAR (Saturday, 7:30 and 9 p.m.) Since the early 1980s this pianist and composer (above) has led New Yor-Uba, a large ensemble that [...]

CHRISTIAN SANDS HIGHWIRE TRIO AT JAZZ STANDARD (Friday to Sunday, 7:30 and 9:30 p.m.) Barely 30, Sands (above) is known as one of the most commanding pianists of jazz's young [...]

FAY VICTOR AT THE WHITNEY MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ART (Friday, 5 and 7 p.m.; Saturday, 2 and 4 p.m.) Breath, inflection, hiccuping sobs, mirthful laughter -- as Victor (right) sees [...]

Byline: Giovanni Russonello The prolific musician has started a nonprofit and taken a leadership role at Berklee College of Music. On a new album, 'Diatom Ribbons,' she continues to make [...]

DAVID TORN'S SUN OF GOLDFINGER AT NUBLU 151 (Sunday, 9 p.m.) Torn (above), who has played with fellow jazz greats and recorded for rock stars like David Bowie, has taken [...]

In a career that began in the early 1960s, he worked with a long and varied list of musicians and groups including Hugh Masekela, Carla Bley and Blood, Sweat and [...]

SULLIVAN FORTNER TRIO AT JAZZ STANDARD (Through Sunday, 7:30 and 9:30 p.m.) At just 32, this dazzling New Orleanian pianist (above) has already been handsomely decorated: He's won the Leonore [...]

The prolific musician has started a nonprofit and taken a leadership role at Berklee College of Music. On a new album, ''Diatom Ribbons,'' she continues to make her point clear. [...]

RON CARTER AT MERKIN HALL (Saturday, 8 p.m.) You could ask this 82-year-old National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master (above) almost limitless questions. Terrance McKnight, a musician and WQXR [...]

A bandleader, composer and educator, he was sought after by top musicians to record with them, drawn by his harmonic sophistication and feel for the blues. Harold Mabern, a pianist, [...]

DAVID VIRELLES AND THURMAN BARKER & TIME FACTOR AT THE LEONARD NIMOY THALIA THEATER (Saturday, 8 p.m.) Virelles (above) is a Cuban-born pianist who uses understated dissonance and darkness to [...]

Against the odds, Guillermo Klein has held together Los Guachos, his multinational 11-piece big band, for almost a quarter of a century. In those years, this Argentine-born pianist and composer [...]

BILLY LESTER AT JAZZ STANDARD (Friday, 7:30 and 9:30 p.m.) For over 40 years, this quietly distinctive pianist (above) has lived and taught in Yonkers, while hardly ever venturing into [...]

Clora Bryant, a trumpeter who was widely considered one of the finest jazz musicians on the West Coast -- but who ran into gender-based limitations on how famous she could [...]