TOP NEWS JAZZ

L Ron Hubbard spent hours with us each day. I was scared the first time I met him, because I thought he could read minds In 1968, I was 23 and looking for answers. I was living in Texas, working in textiles, smoking a lot of marijuana, and exploring ... read more

(High Note) Storytelling trumpeter Pelt boldly crosses genres and ages with agile contemporary bop, ballads and spoken word passages Jeremy Pelt, a trumpet virtuoso who could have dropped without blinking into classic 1960s Blue Note sessions cut years before he was born, has interlaced his familiar mix of ... read more

At 83, the saxophonist has somewhat mellowed his funkily avant-garde music – but his anger at the racial injustice he has fought all his life remains undimmed One night at Five Spot Cafe in the early 1960s, two gangsters were sitting at the bar when Cecil Taylor’s group started ... read more

With Lee Daniels’ film The United States Vs Billie Holiday out this week, the jazz star’s signatures – gowns, gloves and gardenias – are being reassessed. Could they be seen as a radical act? For her comeback concert at Carnegie Hall in March 1948, after 10 months in jail, ... read more

(Challenge)Italy’s top jazz pianist and one of Belgium’s leading trumpeters have nothing to prove on this effortlessly breezy set of originals In its quiet and unassertive way, this is a happy set by two highly accomplished, middle-aged musicians with nothing to prove. Pieranunzi gave up being a professor of ... read more

It took Joe Muggs until his 30s to get into Mitchell’s grown-up music, but once it clicked, the whole history of music was rewritten in his head Read more from our series: The fandom that made me Maybe appropriately, as she is the epitome of “grown-up” music, I didn’t ... read more

The Fania All-Stars player and record-label impresario worked with Latin music giants including Celia Cruz and fostered a more intense, political salsa sound Johnny Pacheco, the co-founder of trailblazing salsa label Fania Records, has died aged 85. The cause was complications from pneumonia. A representative for Fania said Pacheco ... read more

Trumpeter Yazz Ahmed and singer-songwriter Amahla weigh on the findings which include scepticism about women’s musical ability and pregnancy prejudice Women in the UK jazz scene face discrimination and sexual harassment according to a new report, from requests to “sex up” their album covers to tokenism, maternal discrimination and ... read more

From hard bop to fusion, mischievousness to sensitivity, Corea’s wide-ranging catalogue lived at the vanguard of jazz Chick Corea dies aged 79 Chick Corea: a fearless musical adventurer who took the art of piano to new heights The jazz pioneer Chick Corea died last ... read more

Jazz pianist who was happy to stray into rock and classical fusions Chick Corea, who has died aged 79, was a playfully prodigious jazz piano improviser, a versatile composer and a pioneer of 1970s jazz-rock fusion. Admired for his work across many genres from rock and Latin to classical, ... read more

Herbalism, biology, martial arts and sculpture informed Graves’s unique style, which drove the new music and made sophistication from jazz’s deepest origins Milford Graves: jazz drummer dies aged 79 Of all the freedoms opened up by the free-jazz revolution of the 1960s, none was more radical or, to many, ... read more

From flights of sublime abstraction with Miles Davis to virtuoso jazz fusion, Corea’s artistry was irresistible to the last Chick Corea, Grammy-winning jazz musician, dies at 79 A certain melodic sparkle and an irresistible rhythmic vitality were the elements that allowed Chick Corea to move beyond the ... read more

(RVNG)Strom’s first album in 30 years – and last, following her death in December – is a quiet riot of digitally manipulated drones and noise The music of the San Francisco-based composer Pauline Anna Strom, who died just before Christmas, aged 74, might be described as new age – ... read more

The composer, keyboardist and bandleader, who won 23 Grammy awards, has died of a rare form of cancer The jazz pioneer Chick Corea has died at the age of 79. According to a post on his Facebook page, the musician died from “a rare form of cancer which was ... read more

Tracing over 400 years of black music, an ambitious new museum in Nashville celebrates artists we all know and those whose work remains under the radar In 1967, Jimi Hendrix accidentally cracked his guitar before a concert. Seeing it was pretty much broken, he decided to destroy it on ... read more