Jazz

Musician, composer and arranger who also won five Grammys hailed by Michael Bublé as ‘a genius, a beast’Johnny Mandel, the Oscar and Grammy-winning composer behind the theme from M*A*S*H and more, has died aged 94.Details of his death have not been released. The news was announced by musician and friend ... read more

(Ever)The east London bar-band’s knowing patchwork of jazz styles is ambitious and funKansas Smitty’s is a live-music bar in Hackney, east London. It’s also the name of the seven-piece band that runs the place and calls it home, a band that doesn’t sound remotely like any of its contemporaries. It ... read more

(Agogo)The Melbourne collective and 76-year-old Astatke play wedding songs, political rap and cross-continental fusionsLike many great jazz originals liberated by the idiom’s openness to all manner of borrowings and hybrids, the Ethiopian multi-instrumentalist and composer Mulatu Astatke created a new sound by unlikely alchemy – between the Latin grooves and ... read more

Dewy-eyed chatter meets master craftsmanship in this loving behind-the-scenes look at a treasured New York emporiumThis extraordinarily pleasant, restful film is essentially the digital equivalent of hanging out in the Manhattan shop of the title, a Greenwich Village institution of sorts where master craftsman Rick Kelly and his young apprentice ... read more

London jazz club hosts virtual concert with work inspired by themes of race, identity and immigrationIn the 1980s, the British roots reggae of groups such as Steel Pulse and Aswad provided a cultural backbeat to protests and civil unrest. In 2020, British jazz is covering similar ground as the Black ... read more

(Virgin EMI/Blue Note)Jones is as melodious as ever, but can’t smooth over everything…One reliable lockdown pleasure has been Norah Jones’s performances “for anyone who wants to listen”. Unflashy and sensibly short, she plays piano requests, covers or demos, while streams of fans thank “Nojo” for being there for them. You’ll ... read more

The actor and director on a Spike Lee classic, Ethiopia’s astounding piano-playing nun and a set of photographs of a ping pong tableActor, comedian and director Simon Bird was born in 1984 in Guildford, Surrey. He studied English at Queens’ College, Cambridge and completed an MFA in cultural and critical ... read more

The singer-songwriter reflects on her eclectic back catalogue, from a breakthrough mellow jazz smash to collaborations with Danger Mouse and Jeff Tweedy To this day, it is hard to reconcile the supernatural success of Norah Jones’s debut album with the shy 22-year-old at its centre. Released in 2002, Come Away ... read more

Brilliant jazz pianist and composer who could make the outlands of modern music feel like the most hospitable of placesFew free-improvising musicians, singlemindedly stirring the soundworlds of lyricism, jagged dissonance, recognisable melody and raw noise, can bring audiences to stunned silence and leave stages to awed ovations. Even fewer are ... read more

Lou Reed, Bob Dylan and Patti Smith all played guitars made from wood salvaged from New York buildings. Now there’s a documentary about the eccentric genius who crafted themRick Kelly’s guitar shop occupies the ground floor of a red brick tenement at 42 Carmine Street in New York’s West Village. ... read more

He had an alchemical instinct for bringing together progressive rock and a new jazz generation – and the results were magicWhen his daughter Inca was small, Keith Tippett overheard her saying that her father was a “mujician”. It was a title he appropriated for an outstanding series of solo piano ... read more

In Listener’s digest, our writers help you explore the work of great musicians. Next up: the jazz pioneer who stepped outside of genre to revolutionise music as a wholeKind of Blue (1959) Related: 'It sounded like the future': behind Miles Davis's greatest album Continue reading... ... read more

(Blue Note)At times on this fourth album from the Manchester trio you want to ask: “What’s the rush?” A pell-mell, pedal-to-the-floor approach is, of course, one of the group’s signatures. They may owe a debt to the repetitive minimalism of composers like Philip Glass, but they grew up in the ... read more

Composer for Unforgiven and The Bridges of Madison County, who Eastwood taught to swim in the army, died in CaliforniaLennie Niehaus, who as Clint Eastwood’s favoured composer created the scores to Unforgiven and 12 more of his films, has died aged 90.He died at his daughter’s California home under hospice ... read more

(Lateralize)This north-east duo’s debut captivates from beginning to endThis is a little gem of an album: simple, modest and, as far as I can tell, perfect. Jo Harrop sings, Jamie McCredie plays guitar, and the songs date from between the late 1920s and the early 2000s, from Billy Rose to ... read more