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In 1969 the 26-year-old German musician Manfred Eicher began what would become one of the world’s longest-running and most influential jazz labels, with a signature production approach that emphasized space and a roster of artists that included Keith Jarrett, Paul Motian, Chick Corea, and Gary Burton. Read More »
Sauter's innovative and challenging arrangements gave the big-band sound an artistic sophistication that anticipated the rise of the Third Stream.
Hoagy Carmichael was already a successful songwriter when he moved to Hollywood in 1936, but it was the movies that made him a familiar face to millions,
At the end of 1967 one of the most popular groups in jazz, the Dave Brubeck Quartet, disbanded. What did its star alto saxophonist Paul Desmond do next? Desmond biographer Doug Ramsey joins us to discuss the musician's last decade.
At the end of 1965 pianist McCoy Tyner left John Coltrane’s group and struck out on his own, eventually recording a series of albums for the Blue Note label that began the extension of his jazz legacy beyond the Coltrane quartet.
Tom Wilson produced rock albums by Bob Dylan, Simon and Garfunkel, and the Velvet Underground that were some of the most influential records of the 1960s, but he got his start in the 1950s running his own adventurous jazz label, recording artists such as John Coltrane, Donald Byrd, Cecil Taylor, and Sun Ra.
Pittsburgh has produced many great jazz artists, and at the beginning of the 1960s two of them teamed up to make a notable series of albums for the Blue Note label.
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.
"Serious jazz musicians are into their music like it's a religion," says Sisto.
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.
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.
An interview with Rachel Berenson Perry about her new study of an often-overlooked painter.
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.
David Brent Johnson hosts the weekly WFIU historical jazz program Night Lights and Afterglow as well. Learn more »
