Blog - Jazz Spectrum

The Best of 2023 – Owning It

By Fritz ByersIf someone tells you they understand the current music landscape, they’re bragging.  And if they tell you they know what it will look like by the end of the decade, they’re lying.

The Best of 2023, from a committed avant-gardist

By Rob Michaels (Jazz Spectrum Listener)

This Week on Jazz Spectrum – A Sampler of Holiday Jazz

By Fritz ByersJudging by the torrent of holiday jazz releases over the last decade, there must be a market for the genre. The remainder of this paragraph, discussing markets, genres, and artistic pandering, is being self-censored. That’s because the thoughts don’t apply to the holiday-themed music you’ll hear this week on Jazz Spectrum and Jazz Spectrum Overnight. Both shows are chock-a-block with great musicians having fun with, and finding fascination in, the familiar songs of the season. Elsewhere on the site, you’ll find the Jazz Spectrum playlist. Read More

This Week on Jazz Spectrum – The Spirit of Live Recordings

By Fritz ByersAt its core, jazz is an improvisational music. I believe I read about fifty years ago that the projectivist poet Charles Olson said something to the effect that if you say the same thing twice, you’ve lied. Read More

Phil Haynes: An accomplished drummer invites us into his world

Photograph by René Pierre Allain

This Week on Jazz Spectrum – Yesterdays

By Fritz Byers Read More

This Week on Jazz Spectrum – A Garland of Thanks

By Fritz Byers As a way of doing my share to promote the spirit of the week, I’ve organized this week’s show around the theme of thanks. You can check the titles of the tunes if you wonder what that means. Read More

This Week on Jazz Spectrum – Duke Ellington’s “Far East Suite”

By Fritz Byers     Read More

This Week on Jazz Spectrum – Sonny Rollins’s “The Freedom Suite”

By Fritz ByersBy 1958, the tenor saxophonist Sonny Rollins had established himself firmly at the apex of jazz, sitting alongside John Coltrane as heirs of their instrument’s tradition, founded on the triumvirate of Lester Young, Coleman Hawkins, and Ben Websters, and as the progenitors of the tenor’s next great era. Read More