Take Five

“The best thing you can do,” Abbey Lincoln once said, “is to be a woman and stand before the world and speak your heart.”

Along with new music by Natural Information Society, Cowboys & Frenchmen, and Michael Dease.

On his first Presidents' Day in office, enjoy a jazz playlist for 46. 

Along with some new fire from singer-songwriters Thandi Ntuli and Fay Victor.

Along with a label homecoming for legendary drummer-composer Joe Chambers.

MLK Day was first observed as a federal holiday precisely 35 years ago.

Along with a standards album by Becca Stevens and a trio session led by saxophonist Ivo Perelman.

As we embark on a new year, open up to some new music.

The first batch of Christmas jazz albums landed early this year. Here come the reinforcements.

Pianist-composer Dave Brubeck was born on Dec. 6, 1920.

Hark! The new spate of Christmas jazz albums is here.

An Election Week special in Take Five

Few artists ever traveled farther while keeping a foothold in the blues.

Yusef Lateef, the pioneering multi-reedist and composer born 100 years ago this week, could never be constrained, neither by limits nor by labels. He was a serious cultural hybridist long before the imprecise term “world music” entered circulation. And much like John Coltrane and Sonny Rollins, who admired him even as he looked up to them, he was a lifelong seeker.

In Take Five, hear one sterling track for each decade of Sonny’s monumental career.

Along with a new collaboration between Angelica Sanchez and Marilyn Crispell.

Along with the latest from saxophonists Alan Braufman and Dave Pietro.

It’s never a bad time to celebrate Art Blakey, the indefatigable drummer, towering bandleader and peerless mentor.

But the occasion of a new release by Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers, just out on Blue Note, is reason enough to hijack this edition of Take Five with a Blakey beat. This hardly begins to scratch the surface of his monumental recorded legacy — but it gives some picture of what he was about. Beginning with a cut from the newly unearthed album, it goes on to cover some of his work as a sideman, and later as a guardian of tradition.

Also: a made-in-quarantine album by Miles Okazaki, and the marital duo of Jana Herzen and Charnett Moffett.

(Complete with a dessert course served by Benny Green.)

Along with a timely track by pianist Mike King, and a video exclusive by Joey Alexander.