Night Lights Classic Jazz

Out Of The Shadows: Percy France

Though he recorded with organists Bill Doggett and Jimmy Smith, when saxophonist Percy France died in 1992 he was primarily known and admired among a small circle of his fellow New York City jazz musicians. Now a new website aims to elevate his soulful tenor sound and story. Read More »

Recent Shows

The Fantastic Jazz Harp Of Dorothy Ashby

Ashby turned the harp into a swinging and dynamic instrument for jazz.

First Fusion Jazz Rock before Bitches Brew

In the late 1960s, young musicians such as The Free Spirits, the Fourth Way, and other now-forgotten fusioneers made the first attempts to blend jazz with rock.

On fire in the late Forties: one label's contribution to a sea-change in jazz.

Long before it was a center of the psychedelic counterculture and its attendant rock groups, San Francisco was a West Coast haven for the development of jazz.

Burns' writing built on the advances of arrangers and composers such as Duke Ellington and Eddie Sauter, infusing the 1940s swing-era sound with a rich and often subtle use of musical devices.

Exploring the life and compositions of "the architect of bop."

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.

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.

Older stories »

Night Lights Blog

My Interview With Duke Ellington

... OK, that should be "interview." A virtual conversation, using a very analog-era practice, in which I chat with the Duke about his work on the film score for ANATOMY OF A MURDER.

John Coltrane A Love Supreme Live In Seattle

Night Lights' annual roundup of notable archival releases and reissues.

Indiana University jazz studies head Tom Walsh and vocalists Rachel Caswell and Janiece Jaffe joined David Brent Johnson on WFIU's "Just You And Me" to discuss Dominic Spera, the trumpeter and former IU jazz educator who passed away on Saturday, October 23 at the age of 89. Spera's music is featured as well.