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Near the Great Falls in the Historic District of Paterson, New Jersey sits the Essex and Phoenix Mills. An industrial center of buildings that were once…

Terence Blanchard isn’t your average jazz musician—the world-renowned trumpet player and festival alum is also a prolific Academy Award-nominated film composer and an exciting new voice in the opera world. For his latest album Absence, his electro-acoustic quintet E-Collective joins forces with violinist David Balakrishnan’s Turtle Island Quartet. Their Charlie Parker Jazz Festival performance will feature works from the Wayne Shorter tribute album, which features five compositions from the legendary saxophonist. They’re joined by the jazz bassist Buster Williams, who has played with a Who’s Who of jazz greats from Mary Lou Williams to Herbie Hancock, and is the subject of the JazzTimes Documentary Film of the Year, Bass to Infinity. Buster will play with his all-star quartet Something More. Vibraphonist Nikara Warren will perform her album Black Wall Street, which melds hip-hop, jazz, neo-soul, and Afro-Caribbean rhythms into an abstract sound-collage that “take pieces of black music and give it a platform to show black musical beauty.” Vuyo Sotashe, a South African jazz vocalist, is making his mark in the New York jazz scene.

This engagement of Buster Williams & Something More is made possible through the ArtsCONNECT program of Mid Atlantic Arts with support from the National Endowment for the Arts. 

Archie Shepp and Jason Moran are two avant-garde jazz musicians from different generations that nonetheless share a penchant for pushing the envelope. Shepp is a veteran saxophonist who has been called both a musical firebrand and a cultural radical, standing out even amongst myriad talents in the free jazz generation. Moran is pianist 37 years Shepp’s junior, with an equal respect for tradition and trailblazing. Their 2021 collaboration Let My People Go is a warm and intimate collection of duets recorded live in 2017-2018, a pristine portrait of two masters at work. They’ll be joined by special guest Cécile McLorin Salvant, a once-in-a-generation vocalist known for transformative performances of well-traveled standards. The bill also includes the Grammy-nominated Chilean tenor saxophonist Melissa Aldana, who plays with a ferocious energy and deft musicality; Bria Skonberg, a Canadian jazz trumpeter and bandleader once described by The Wall Street Journal as one of the most versatile and imposing musicians of her generation; and Pasquale Grasso, a master be-bop guitarist known for elevating the instrument through his pianistic approach, showing the influence of Bud Powell and Art Tatum in a revolutionary hard-swinging way.

For 150 years, The Bethany Baptist Church of Newark has been one of the leading African American houses of worship, and for 20 of those years, the Church has featured monthly jazz in its Saturday evening Vesper services.

Our featured performers in March are the Nat Adderley Jr. Quartet. Growing up in Teaneck, NJ in a famed jazz family (the son of brass legend Nat Adderley and nephew of alto saxophonist Cannonball Adderley), Nat Jr. blazed his own path as a jazz pianist and longtime music director for Luther Vandross.

A New Jersey native, Sheila lived in Melbourne, Australia; Dallas, TX; Chicago, IL; Rome, Italy; Washington, DC; Monroe, LA; and all five boroughs of New York City before returning to the Garden State where she now lives in Belleville with her partner and several pets. Sheila is pleased and proud to have joined WBGO’s Development team in January of 2018 and brings over 20 years of experience supporting fundraising professionals.

Unions warn layoffs would further delay ambulances arrival as WBGO News Director Doug Doyle talks with Reporter Bob Hennelly. DOYLE: As New York City…

WBGO Film Critic Harlan Jacobson recaps the 2025 Sundance Film Festival

WBGO's Dave Popkin chats with those involved with Charlie Apicella's new show Ma Rainey and the Living Tradition of the Blues

WBGO's Bob Hennelly joins host Doug Doyle to talk about the Delta variant of the coronavirus and how it's prompting vaccine mandates and a return to masks

Under President Obama, the detainee population has gone from 242 to 45. But he hasn't closed Guantanamo as pledged, and Donald Trump has called for more suspects to be sent to the prison in Cuba.