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Vijay Iyer has never shied away from ambitious projects. Originally conceived for a 2011 dance piece, UnEasy encompasses tunes written or adopted over the course of twenty years, now coalesced as commentary on the past few years’ political turmoil. Joined by fellow jazz geniuses Linda May Han Oh on bass and Tyshawn Sorey on drums (who also plays with Iyer in Fieldwork), the New York native paints vivid canvases that draw on multiple iterations of jazz without overtly paying homage to any single one. “Combat Breathing” gives the musicians a swirling framework in which to wander, as ...

Photos by Jill Steinberg Iranian-American saxophonist Hafez Modirzadeh has spent decades straddling two traditions, finding the commonalities, and using them to create something entirely new. Born in Durham, North Carolina to an Iranian father and an Irish/Russian mother, he came to jazz as a teenager, enraptured by Charlie Parker, Sonny Rollins, Miles Davis, and Lester Young. “It wasn’t until I had to consciously consider who I was in this society and as a musician,” he says, that he was drawn to Persian music, despite having heard his father sing and play the ...

New York Daily News Archive/NY Daily News via Getty Images hide caption toggle caption New York Daily News Archive/NY Daily News via Getty Images Milford Graves, circa 2000, in front of his house in South Jamaica, Queens, N.Y. New York Daily News Archive/NY Daily News via Getty Images Drummer, scientist, educator and improviser Milford Graves died in his Queens, N.Y. home around 3 p.m. on Fri., Feb. 12. He was 79. Lois, his wife of sixty-one years, confirmed to NPR that the cause was congestive heart failure, related to a 2018 diagnosis of amyloid cardi...

‘Reaching for inspiration back into the music’s deepest origins’ ... Milford Graves. Photograph: PR Image Sun 14 Feb 2021 07.32 EST Last modified on Tue 16 Feb 2021 07.53 EST Of all the freedoms opened up by the free-jazz revolution of the 1960s, none was more radical or, to many, disturbing than the freeing of rhythm from fixed points of bar lines and regular time signatures. The American drummer Milford Graves, who has died aged 79, was in the forefront of that move to create momentum through surges of energy that seemed to reflect the social and political passions driving what became...

How Milford Graves Reawakened the Spirit of the Drum How Milford Graves Reawakened the Spirit of the Drum Late percussionist's radical approach galvanized everyone from Lou Reed to Albert Ayler, and built a bridge between music and the healing arts Hank Shteamer, provided by FacebookTwitterEmail In September of 2008, an unusual performance took place at downtown New York club Le Poisson Rouge. At stage right, opposite fellow six-string adventurer Marc Ribot, sat Lou Reed, conjuring clouds of free-rock energy from his guitar. Behind them, avant-garde mainstay John Zorn sent forth piercing, im...