Long Form

The history of jazz is filled with musicians who died prematurely, disappeared, or stepped away from the scene for various reasons. Into this last category falls Alphonso Johnson (Philadelphia, 1951), a bassist who rose to prominence in the mid-1970s as a member of Weather Report. Though best known as an electric bassist, Johnson began on the double bass at an early age, encouraged to take up the instrument partly due to his tall stature. He studied at the Philadelphia Music Academy with John Lamb, the double bassist in Duke Ellington’s orchestra from 1964 to 1967. At just seventeen, the precocious talent embarked on his professional career. His first major engagement came in 1972 with Woody Herman’s Orchestra, with whom he recorded The Raven Speaks (Fantasy). The following year he appeared on Land of Make Believe (Mercury) with trumpeter Chuck Mangione. But his big break arrived in 1974, when Joe Zawinul […]

The early 1990s marked the return of great singers. Many who had lived in near anonymity during the 1970s suddenly came back into view....

Let’s start with a song: “Laura.” David Raksin composed the music for the film of the same name (released in Italy as Vertigine), and...

Ayers died on March 4 in New York. The warm sound of his instrument has fallen silent, leaving an empty void. He was eighty-four...

They called him The Indestructible, and that’s how we’ll remember him: with that trademark sneering smile, croaky voice, his ever-present guitar slung over his shoulder, a bottle of gin never far from reach, and Gershwin’s “Liza” floating in the background.

The great pianist recently died at the ripe old age of 97, but he wasn't retired for long: when he said "enough" to live performances, he was 92, and he continued to write music until the end. We remember him with an extensive examination of his formative years

The recent death of the Brazilian pianist truly marks the end of an enchanted world: a true la-la land built in the perfect image and likeness of its ingenious creator

Ninety years after the birth and twenty years after the death of the great soprano, we look at the first, perhaps the least known, phase of his career, between the ages of twenty and thirty

A long essay offering many topics for reflection and discussion, accompanied by a selection of Robeto Polillo's magnificent photographs

The official release of a series of phantasmagoric live recordings by the great guitarist, and the words of some of his famous colleagues