The Checkout

Pianist Onaje Allan Gumbs left us on April 7. We’re remembering him with an archival episode of The Checkout.

Thana Alexa had it all mapped out. Her new album, ONA , was set to launch her solo career to new heights. She was featured — with her husband, drummer Antonio Sánchez — on the cover of DownBeat magazine. Then the coronavirus put her nationwide tour on hold, along with countless other gigs around the world. But out of that chaos came another opportunity: co-producing Live From Our Living Rooms , the world’s first fully livestreamed jazz festival.

We are living in unsettling times, and we’re probably due for a little humor. Last Friday, reedman and composer John Ellis released his own horror story wrapped in comedy: The Ice Siren , a beautiful chamber-jazz project written for a double quartet.

We are all freaking out. Take a moment to center yourself. Blue Note’s newest recording artist, pianist and composer Nduduzo Makhathini, also practices as a sangoma , a traditional South African healer. And in the face of our frightening global pandemic, he offers a message of hope.

Nobody likes being typecast — and the UK-based percussionist Sarathy Korwar is no exception. But because he grew up in India and has a predilection for jazz, he often finds himself lumped into one group or another. On his 2019 album More Arriving , Korwar combats those narratives and reclaims his own.

Last month, New Yorkers got a rare look at some of the freshest improvisational music brewing in The Netherlands. Keyboardist (and looper) Niels Broos and drummer Jamie Peet rattled the walls (and minds) of lucky spectators fortunate to overlook the duo’s pop-up performance at Bowers & Wilkins Sound Lounge during Winter JazzFest.

DOMi — aka Domitille Degalle, a pianist from Nancy, France — is 19, and set to graduate from the Berklee College of Music in May. JD Beck, a drumming prodigy from Dallas, Tx., is wrapping up his high school studies. Rarely do you see two dynamos so well positioned for stardom.

This Saturday night, join John Ellis, Andy Bragen, and me in a pre-concert conversation about their new jazz opera before the 11-piece jazz chamber ensemble performs their Jazz Gallery commission featuring vocalists Gretchen Parlato and Miles Griffith.

Anat Cohen and Oded Lev-Ari sat in the audience at the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles last Sunday afternoon, holding their breath. Their most recent release — Triple Helix , featuring the Anat Cohen Tentet — was up for Best Large Jazz Ensemble Album at the 62nd Grammy Awards.

During the wintertime, there’s always an avalanche of music-related storylines hitting our Inbox. Between the results of 2019 NPR Jazz Critics Poll and a shovel-load of exciting releases on the horizon, writers Francis Davis, Nate Chinen and I have you covered.

New York City’s Winter JazzFest stretches to Brooklyn for the first time this year — arguably offering its best punch of innovative programming, with artists like Kneebody and Daedelus both performing at the Music Hall of Williamsburg as a part of tomorrow’s marathon.

Theo Croker vividly remembers his first lesson with Detroit’s brass hero Marcus Belgrave. It was an encounter that rattled Croker to his core — leaving him in tears and forcing him to come to grips with his shortcomings and aspirations. Though he was already studying trumpet at Oberlin Conservatory of Music, and a grandson of the New Orleans trumpet great Doc Cheatham, that first lesson called everything into question.

The 62nd annual Grammy Awards take place on Sunday, Jan. 26 — and Melissa Aldana will be there, as a nominee in the category of Best Improvised Jazz Solo. Aldana, a tenor saxophonist originally from Santiago, Chile, earned the nod for her performance on “ Elsewhere ,” from her critically acclaimed album Visions ( Motéma ) .

One annual Checkout tradition is to pinpoint innovative takes on the holiday canon. This year we welcomed Martina DaSilva and Dan Chmielinski to deliver a lesser-known take of “Greensleeves,” a gorgeous selection from the Brazilian songbook, and a slick arrangement of the blockbuster hit “Last Christmas,” by Wham!

What makes Black Music the most culturally appropriated music on Earth? Saxophonist David Murray, bassist Rashaan Carter and the rappers Kokayi and Saul Williams have some ideas.