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In the 1940s the young singer Anita O’Day became a sensation on the big-band scene, performing one of jazz’s first racially-integrated duets and courting what would become a lifelong reputation as an independent spirit
In the last decade of his life Art Blakey continued to mentor new talent in his Jazz Messengers group, helping to elevate musicians such as Wynton and Branford Marsalis, Terence Blanchard, and Mulgrew Miller.
Exploring the life and compositions of "the architect of bop."
The great bebop pianist on the radio and in concert with Cootie Williams, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and as the leader of his own trio.
David Baker, one of the world's most renowned jazz educators, passed away March 26. In this archived show he joined us for a look at his compositional legacy.
Throughout the 1950s jazz promoter George Wein ran a Boston nightclub that showcased some of the music’s most notable performers.
He came from Memphis—a pianist who quietly built a reputation over decades as a first-class soloist, accompanist, and writer, carrying musically impeccable credentials from the golden age of hardbop.
It’s a city known for the automobile industry and the soul-pop legacy of Motown Records, but Detroit is also a great jazz capital.
In the 1950s and 60s the race for space loomed large in the cultural imagination, and jazz artists such as Duke Ellington and Sun Ra picked up on the theme.
French culture in the postwar years was strongly influenced by both jazz and the growing American genre of film noir.
"Serious jazz musicians are into their music like it's a religion," says Sisto.
Lalo Schifrin is best known for his “Mission: Impossible” theme and numerous other film scores, but the pianist and composer first emerged from mid-20th century Argentina as a jazz artist, working with Dizzy Gillespie and recording under his own name as well.
As the 1960s neared to a close, the jazz world continued to absorb the cultural upheavals of a volatile decade.
Jazzing Broadway songs, scoring movies, conducting classical music: Andre Previn could do it all before he'd even turned 30.
Pianist Lennie Tristano was a singular and charismatic modernist and mentor whose methods helped point the way for the rise of jazz education.
Jazz critic Nate Chinen talks about his recent book "Playing Changes: Jazz For The New Century," and we hear music from some of the artists discussed as well.
Some Night Lights recommendations for reading about one of jazz's greatest figures, as well as some programs featuring his music.
As television rocketed into the entertainment culture of mid-20th-century America, musicians and composers, many of them with jazz backgrounds, were called upon to write themes and cues for the wide variety of programs that populated the airwaves.
Chronicling a West Coast record label of the 1940s.
Before he became a world-renowned saxophonist, Michael Brecker attended Indiana University for a year and a half in the late 1960s. We'll hear some Brecker recordings from that period as well as commentary from jazz scholar David Demsey, who is organizing the archive of Brecker materials that was given to William Paterson University after Brecker's death in 2007.
From Lee Morgan's "The Sidewinder" to John Coltrane's A LOVE SUPREME, from the impact of the Beatles to the avant-garde's October revolution, a notable year.
How singer and pianist Nat King Cole pushed the boundaries of 1950s segregated culture through its hottest medium.
The singing icon was also a master pianist whose rhythms and harmonic language made him an influential jazz modernist.
A wartime concert, a Carnegie Hall debut, an epic work celebrating black history: the story of Duke Ellington's most ambitious work.
Five decades after Wes Montgomery's death in 1968, newly-discovered live recordings continue to emerge.
An interview with Rachel Berenson Perry about her new study of an often-overlooked painter.
Exploring the musical history of the "pianist of his own genre" depicted in the movie GREEN BOOK.
The future king of Pop Art and the maestro of American jazz: a fleeting and lighthearted intersection of their work on a summer 1955 TV variety program.
Often described by his peers as a "saint," Dolphy was a multi-instrumentalist and musical seeker whose legacy rests on recordings made in the last four years of his life.
Joni Mitchell is well-known as the writer of radio hits such as “Both Sides Now” and “Help Me”, but she also formed connections with the jazz world, especially in the 1970s.
David Brent Johnson hosts the weekly WFIU historical jazz program Night Lights and Afterglow as well. Learn more »
