Nate Chinen
Nate Chinen has been writing about jazz for more than 20 years.
He spent a dozen of them working as a critic for The New York Times, and helmed a long-running column for JazzTimes.
He is author of Playing Changes: Jazz For the New Century, published in hardcover by Pantheon in 2018, and on paperback by Vintage in 2019. Hailed as one of the Best Books of the Year by NPR, GQ, Billboard, and JazzTimes, it's a chronicle of jazz in our time, and an argument for the music's continuing relevance. It has also been published internationally, in Italian and Spanish editions.
A thirteen-time winner of the Helen Dance–Robert Palmer Award for Excellence in Writing, presented by the Jazz Journalists Association, Chinen is also coauthor of Myself Among Others: A Life in Music, the 2003 autobiography of festival impresario and producer George Wein, which earned the JJA’s award for Best Book About Jazz.
Chinen was born in Honolulu, to a musical family: his parents were popular nightclub entertainers, and he grew up around the local Musicians Union. He went to college on the east coast and began writing about jazz in 1996, at the Philadelphia City Paper. His byline has also appeared in a range of national music publications, including DownBeat, Blender and Vibe. For several years he was the jazz critic for Weekend America, a radio program syndicated by American Public Media. And from 2003 to 2005 he covered jazz for the Village Voice.
His work appears in Best Music Writing 2011 (Da Capo); Pop When the World Falls Apart: Music in the Shadow of Doubt (Duke University Press, 2012), and Miles Davis: The Complete Illustrated History (Voyageur Press, 2012).
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Hear the first taste of some highly anticipated albums by drummers Makaya McCraven and Mark Guiliana, guitarist Julian Lage, and cornetist Kirk Knuffke — along with a recent solo drop by pianist Marta Warelis.
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Vibraphonist and composer Sasha Berliner made 'Onyx' with first-rate collaborators like keyboardist James Francies, bassist Burniss Travis and drummer Marcus Gilmore. Listen now to its opening track, "Jade."
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Gabe Baltazar, alto saxophonist and flutist who carved a path for Asian-American jazz, is dead at 92A star alto saxophone soloist with the Stan Kenton Orchestra, Gabe Baltazar also made an outsize impact as one of the most celebrated jazz musicians ever to emerge from Hawaii, where he presided as a local hero.
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The Art of the Story checks in with vocalists Sara Serpa and Jen Shyu, co-founders of Mutual Mentorship for Musicians (M3), about the organization's mission and inaugural festival, co-presented by Winter Jazzfest.
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This week's Take Five is full of musical hat-tips, from Moor Mother, Bennie Maupin and Adam Rudolph, Grant Stewart, Anteloper, and Billy Mohler.
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'Holding Space' will be the first release on Lizz Wright's own label, Blues and Greens Records. WBGO is proud to premiere a short film by the same name, created under pandemic conditions.
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It has been more than two years since musicians played for an audience inside Smoke, the beloved Upper West Side jazz haunt. Now the club is about to reopen in expanded and renovated form.
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Five extraordinary young pianists — Caelan Cardello, Esteban Castro, Paul Cornish, Thomas Linger and Isaiah J. Thompson — join WBGO's Nate Chinen for a concert co-presented by Yamaha and the American Pianists Association.
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"Blood Count," the Billy Strayhorn ballad, provides fine fodder for a trio of Charles Lloyd, Bill Frisell and Thomas Morgan, as heard on the forthcoming album 'Trios: Chapel.'