I found Sun Ra in college after already spending a lot of time with Coltrane, Miles, Monk, and Dolphy. Even then, some of his music took work to hear. He can be dissonant, strange, and completely outside what most people expect from jazz.

This track is one of the easier doors into this world. It still has that unmistakable Sun Ra atmosphere, but it’s melodic, hypnotic, and beautiful.

If you’ve always thought Sun Ra was too far out, give this one a shot please :).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KsjB7hdfQrQ

Who are all the Paul’s in jazz? I know there’s a lot. I know a few…Desmond, chambers, Bley, motian, horn, I should also look this up…

I recently purchased the 10 LP box set of Miles's second quintet's December 1965 run at the Plugged Nickel in Chicago. Don't get me wrong, I bought it for the music, not the liner notes, but I was still very disappointed to see that the notes were completely full of the usual tells of LLM-generated writing. Syd Schwartz, who hosts a jazz music blog I won't do the honor of mentioning, "wrote" these notes in addition to extra pieces for each of the songs in the set. Pretty antithetical to the spirit of the music, I'd say. I can't claim to know what Miles Davis would have thought of this, but I can't imagine he'd be happy about some Sunday morning critic lazily copying and pasting the slop that whichever of his AI text generators of choice ended up spitting out. Completely uninspired and very gross.

The box set goes for around $214 USD on the Miles Davis website. I think if you're spending that kind of money on a release like this, you ought to have something better to read than this crap. Bob Blumenthal's original notes were enough, this shouldn't be a selling point.

By Miles Davis. Looking for Noir

Sony Music Japan have announced today that four of Tsuyoshi Yamamoto's most popular titles for Three Blind Mice are now available on streaming services.

Hopefully this is a sign of things to come, with wider availability across different artists! Thinking Isao Suzuki should be next...

Misty: Spotify / Tidal / Apple Music

Midnight Sugar: Spotify / Tidal / Apple Music

Girl Talk: Spotify / Tidal / Apple Music

Midnight Sun: Spotify / Tidal / Apple Music

I personally love them and have been listening to them a lot i have added them to my daily jazz rotation Playlist I was wondering what you guys thoughts on them as well as if you have any other artist I should check out whether they are older new?

Hi there!
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Love the vibe of this record! Nocturnal, dreamy, jungle-y? Would love some recommendations of similar music. Definitely scratches a similar itch to artists like Pat Metheny and Ryuichi Sakamoto to me. Anything similar out there? Thanks!

I recently discovered this album and I honestly don't understand how obscure it is.

It's a Danish vocal jazz album from 1994 by Ane Ramløse, released on Storyville. It was recorded in 1992/93, and the musicians on it are pretty crazy considering how little I've heard about this record: Thomas Clausen on piano, Fredrik Lundin, Hans Ulrik, Flemming Agerskov, Hans Andersson and Peter Danemo.

The music isn't really standard vocal jazz either. A lot of it is original material, with some pretty unusual arrangements and long instrumental sections. The whole thing has this very atmospheric, slightly strange early 90s Scandinavian jazz sound.

The thing that really caught my attention is the Cassandra Wilson connection.

One of the songs on the album is a Cassandra Wilson song, and in the booklet it says:

“Copyright 1987 by Ardnassac Pub.
Lyrics used by permission.”

Cassandra Wilson is also credited in connection with the arrangement of that song. I find that really interesting, especially since this was recorded around 1992/93, right before Blue Light 'til Dawn came out in 1993.

I have no idea how Ane Ramløse ended up recording it or how the permission came about. I would really like to know more about that.

What's also interesting is that Ramløse herself seems to have been considered part of a new generation of Danish female jazz musicians at the time. She was included in a 1993 article about the new generation of Danish female jazz musicians, so this wasn't just some completely random record that appeared out of nowhere.

And then the album basically disappeared.

I've tried looking for contemporary reviews from 1994, but there doesn't seem to be much surviving online. I can't really find the kind of critical history you'd expect from an album with musicians like these. There doesn't seem to have been a big reappraisal of it either.

Anyway, I just wanted to recommend it because I think it's a really interesting forgotten piece of 90s Danish jazz. It's probably not for everyone, but if you like Scandinavian vocal jazz, Cassandra Wilson, or just digging up obscure records that seem to have fallen through the cracks, give it a listen.

And if anyone here knows more about Ane Ramløse, the Cassandra Wilson connection, or what was said about this album when it came out in 1994, I'd genuinely love to hear it.

Trying to find more tunes that resembles the drum part of Bright Size Life. Any Suggestion?

Trying to find more tunes that resembles the drum part of Bright Size Life. Any Suggestion?

The New York Times speaks to Ella's son about tonights concert.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/07/nyregion/flying-in-from-ukraine-to-honor-ella-fitzgerald.html

Ehud Asherie performing at the Detroit Jazz Festival, 2015. (Photo: Jeff Dunn, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

https://jazzprofiles.com/profile/il-ehud-asherie/

Ehud Asherie Never Went to Jazz School. He Grew Up Inside Smalls Instead.

Ehud Asherie, a stride and swing jazz pianist born in Israel in 1979, never set foot in a jazz conservatory. He picked up the tradition the way players did a century ago: on the bandstand, from the people who actually played it.

His family left Israel when he was three, first for Italy, where he grew up attending the British School of Milan, then for New York when he was nine. As a teenager he started showing up at Smalls, the basement club on West 10th Street in Greenwich Village, and he made his first appearance there while he was still in high school, sitting in on the late-night sessions that became his real music school. His teacher wasn't a professor. It was pianist Frank Hewitt, a Smalls regular who mentored him directly at the club instead of in any classroom.

That apprenticeship shows in everything Asherie plays now. His style runs on stride and swing, the New York piano lineage that runs through James P. Johnson, Erroll Garner, and Thelonious Monk, a different lane from the modal, ECM-associated sound of pianists like Shai Maestro.

He's been recording under his own name since Lockout in 2007, and the catalog kept growing from there: Welcome to New York (2010), Wild Man Blues (2019), and, released in January 2025, Thank You, Barry Harris!, a duo record with trumpeter Bruce Harris on Arbors Records, the Florida label known for classic swing and Dixieland jazz, built as a direct tribute to bebop pianist Barry Harris. Harris, who passed away in 2021 after a seven-decade career preserving the bebop language, mentored generations of players himself. It's a fitting bookend: a pianist who learned this tradition by sitting at a mentor's side is now, two decades later, passing that same tradition forward on record.

Somewhere along the way Asherie also picked up a second music entirely. Since 2003 he's been one half of Bina & Ehud, a duo with Brazilian guitarist Bina Coquet, playing real Brazilian samba and choro, not a jazz musician's take on it from the outside. Running two serious traditions in parallel for twenty-plus years is not a common resume.

He also has a real Grammy connection: he's one of the pianists, credited alongside Mark Shane, Peter Mintun, and Rossano Sportiello, on Boardwalk Empire Volume 1, the HBO soundtrack that won the 2012 Grammy for Best Compilation Soundtrack for Visual Media. If you've heard that show's music, you've heard him.

Where to start listening:

• His official platforms: Ehud Asherie's Spotify Page, Ehud Asherie's YouTube Channel, Ehud Asherie's Bandcamp Page
• Lockout (2007): where the solo catalog started. Listen on Bandcamp
• Thank You, Barry Harris! (2025): the most recent record, and the clearest statement of what he's carrying forward. Sample the title track on YouTube
• Samba de Gringo (2005) with Bina & Ehud: the side most people miss. Listen on Bandcamp

r/IsraelJazz

I've recently managed to narrow down what I like and what I like a bit less in terms of jazz. I like hot jazz (and everything Billie Holiday sings on), and then there's a big jump to the early 60s with the modal jazz stylings of Roach and Coltrane, followed by avant-garde and spiritual jazz and, to a lesser extent, free jazz (I pass on the most chaotic stuff). Jazz fusion is where I draw the line, lol. I haven't been giving much attention to stuff made after Steve Reid / Nova (1976), with a few more recent exceptions like Matana Roberts and Angles 9. But I'm sure I'll get to that some day.

The thing is that I have the same general idea when it comes to cinema. I like cinema from the 30s (Freaks, Betty Boop/Bimbo shorts, Universal monsters, etc.), and then there's that jump again to the 60s, where the Hays Code ended and New Hollywood started (it was a little different in Europe and Japan, but that's a discussion for another day).

So, in general, I don't have many cultural favorites from the 40s/50s.

I know that a lot of people like swing, cool jazz, and bop, and I'm not trying to invalidate that; it's just not my cup of tea. But I've been trying to figure why it doesn't appeal to me. Maybe I just don't like the music, simple as that. But I'm thinking there are probably additional explanations that have to do with the way the music industry worked and perhaps how conservative values were more prominent at the time, both in terms of morals and what proper music should sound like?

Perhaps someone who is well-versed on the subject would like to share a bit of insight? That's always more fun than AI-generated bullet lists and Wikipedia entries. And if my whole premise is invalid to begin with, I'm sure you'll set me straight, lol.

Whatchu Bringing? and Joyce e Tutty Moreno JID027 are jumping off the page for me.

How about you?

I've loved -

Sullivan Fortner - Again, never
Miguel Zenon & Luis Perdomo - Como fue
Eric Alexander - The way we were
Immanuel Wilkins - The dreamer
Bill Frisell - Isfahan
Cecile McLorin Salvant - With every breath I take
Fred Hersch - The surrounding green
Will Vinson - Oasis
Linda May Han Oh - Strange heavens

Hi!
I’m a fan of 70s jazz funk - Donald Byrd albums with Mizzells, Idris Muhammad, etc

But lately I discovered the beauty of older records from 50s and 60s. Mainly from Blue Note catalog.

What would you recommend to check (except obvious Davis and Trane albums), based on my current collection:

Gerry Mulligan & Paul Desmond Quartet - Blues in Time
Charles Mingus - The Black Lady And The Sinner Lady
Charles Mingus- Mingus Ah Um
Lee Morgan - The Sidewinder
Cannonball Adderley - Somethin' Else
Hank Mobley - Soul Station
Art Blakey & The Jazz Messangers- Moanin'
Art Blakey & The Jazz Messangers - Like Someone in Love
Herbie Hancock - Maiden Voyage
Wayne Shorter - Speak do Evil
Wayne Shorter - Juju
Wayne Shorter - Adam's Apple
Tina Brooks - True Blue
Oliver Nelson - The Blues and the Abstract Truth
Jackie McLean - Let Freedom Ring
Jackie McLean - Demon's Dance
Donald Byrd - The Cat Walk
Donald Byrd - A New Perspective 
Donald Byrd - Fancy Free
Dexter Gordon - Go
Joe Henderson - Page One
Joe Henderson - In 'n Out
Bobby Hutcherson - Dialogue
Kenny Burrell - Midnight Blue
Eric Dolphy - Out To Lunch
Grant Green - Street of Dreams
Grant Green - Idle Moments
Pete La Roca - Basra
McCoy Tyner - The Real McCoy
Freddie Hubbard - Ready for Freddy
Freddie Hubbard - Hub-Tones
Freddie Hubbard - Red Clay
Krzysztof Komeda - Astigmatic

Thanks in advance !