NPR Jazz

The rising jazz flutist blends Afrofuturistic jazz and Haitian folk in a transfixing Tiny Desk quarantine concert for our Black History Month celebration.

The jazz saxophonist and his quartet perform three songs that speak directly to the struggle and triumph of the Black experience for Tiny Desk's Black History Month celebration.

Jazz Night visits the St. John Will-I-Am Coltrane African Orthodox Church, an evolving house of worship that has incorporated John Coltrane's A Love Supreme album as their chief liturgical text.

The political is personal for the nine-time Grammy winner. Watch him lead the Jazz At Lincoln Center Orchestra Septet through three songs from his Democracy! Suite.

Jazz Night shines a light on the reclusive 74-year-old pianist Billy Lester. Lester has spent his whole life in Yonkers, N.Y. We hear his story and listen back to a trio set recorded in 2019.

The trombonist was a major figure in South Africa's early jazz scene, and an activist after the restrictions imposed by apartheid. In 1988 he was nominated for an Oscar for his theme to Cry Freedom.

The Argentine singer-songwriter performed a three-song set from her Brooklyn apartment for Tiny Desk Meets globalFEST.

This Algerian and Canadian band recorded its Tiny Desk Meets globalFEST set from Colombia and France.

The cost of 2020 — in lives, livelihoods, legacies and communities — is high and still being tallied. For jazz critic Nate Chinen, all that loss demands change to old ideas of critical objectivity.

2020 was an annus horribilis if there ever was one, writes Francis Davis, the founder of NPR Music's Jazz Critics poll, and much of the year's best jazz carried post-apocalyptic feelings within it.