The jazz world lost some fine drummers in the last year. Roy Haynes was still playing in his 90s before he passed in November of 2024, and Jack DeJohnette left a giant hole in the music when he died this past October. Al Foster will also be sorely missed. Though he died in May of

British soul band the James Hunter Six are well known for their smooth, gritty style of music based on American Soul of the 1960s, but they do more than mimic the tropes. Lead singer Hunter infectiously inhabits the deep emotional roots of the past and brings it to the present through his storytelling chops and

Many bands experience growing pains when creating the Difficult Second Record. Still, that’s cold comfort when you are in the middle of it. Just ask Zayna Youssef and her bandmates in Sweet Pill. After generating significant buzz from their debut, 2022’s Where the Heart Is, playing festivals like Best Friends Forever and opening for emo

Oded Ruskin’s rich manga adaptation, Drops of God, may look fancy and bizarre, but it is a rare show that meaningfully touches upon art, wine, and philosophy. If you partake, you’ll be squiffed before you know it. Adapted from Tadashi Agi’s television manga, Kami no Shizuku (2004-14), Drops of God is set across Provence, Tokyo,

The Sandbox Kenya-Jade Pinto Together Films 11 March 2026 | One World Screened in the International Competition at One World Film Festival, The Sandbox, Kenya-Jade Pinto’s debut feature, begins with an idea strong enough to sustain an entire documentary. The title gives the film its central metaphor. In technology and gaming, a sandbox is a

Unbalance Carlos Ferreira and Dasom Baek Beacon Sound 20 March 2026 While it sounds like it might be the work of some mysterious intergalactic orchestra, Unbalance is the work of two musicians performing with little to no advance direction. Brazilian experimental guitarist and composer Carlos Ferreira and Korean performer and composer Dasom Baek combined their

Tenor saxophonist Mark Turner is an improviser’s improviser—other musicians speak of him with great respect, and his playing is often cited as an influence. His associations with a group of musicians from his generation, such as guitarist Kurt Rosenwinkel and the cooperative trio Sky (with bassist Larry Grenadier and drummer Jeff Ballard), have aged very

Lindsey Jordan’s songwriting has always pinned down feelings in sharp, immediate terms. On Ricochet, her third album as Snail Mail, she loosens that grip. Letting those emotions slip into something more diffuse and uncertain, she traces the uneasy realization that most of life only makes sense after it’s already gone. Where her earlier work often

In the heart of Tunisia lies a giant salt lake called Chott El Djerid, or “Lagoon of the Land of Palms”. Measuring 160 miles across, the lake has been the subject of numerous works of art, most famously Star Wars, where it was used as a filming location in A New Hope. Although Chott El

Love Everybody loves Joni Mitchell, and everybody has a favorite Joni Mitchell album. That album is Blue (1971). No, not really. It’sCourt and Spark (1974). Ladies of the Canyon (1970). Hejira (1976). What’s that? Is your favourite Mingus (1979)? That’s a good, left-field choice—the culmination of her jazz explorations through the 1970s. Nobody’s favorite came

Since 1980, American guitarist Steve Tibbetts has crafted some of the world’s boldest, most varied, and original guitar music for ECM Records, across 14 releases, including his newest, Close (2025), and his not-to-be-missed, two-CD career retrospective, Hellbound Train (2022). Tibbetts boasts one of the widest palates in guitaring, with a style that fuses elements of

Modern cities are endless sites of reinvention, and movies about New York in particular demonstrate how the greater world is changing. Three movies set in the city from the 1970s to the 1990s exemplify how capitalism as a social relation has transformed. In William Friedkin’s The French Connection (1971), the drug trade is simply the

The Summer We Ate Off the China Devin Jacobsen Sagging Meniscus Press March 2025 At the outset ofThe Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain felt it necessary to explain to his readers that he had portrayed the panoply of voices along the Mississippi River, and did not want readers to think “all these characters were

That many current university students remain saturated in the infantilising world of fantasy generated by comics is a problem for contemporary pop culture pedagogy. In these early years of undergraduate studies in literature and cultural studies, the battleground of critical ideas often orbits around the universes of Marvel, DC, and Harry Potter.Moreover, students are emboldened