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Introducing: Freedom Summer Sessions, a series of digital concerts and conversations with D.C. artists

We find ourselves at a crossroads in the centuries-long struggle against racism and the state-sanctioned brutalizing of Black lives. For the jazz community, the activist energy feeding this moment is nothing new, but it certainly has been renewed. And that’s doubly true here in D.C. — which is both the nation’s capital and an important cultural […]

July 14, 2020 3

Features

For Vernard Gray, supporting jazz meant strengthening his community in Southeast D.C.

For over 50 years, Vernard R. Gray served as a pillar of D.C.’s cultural landscape: organizing art exhibitions, presenting jazz, taking photographs, mentoring young people. He would have turned 79 years old this week, but up until the moment he died, this past January, he was working ceaselessly to expand opportunities and visibility for artists […]

July 10, 2020 0

News

Seven Tones Project brings musicians and filmmakers together (virtually) to celebrate Duke Ellington

After working on a World War I documentary for four years, D.C.-area filmmaker Paul Glenshaw and his filming partner Darroch Greer went looking for a subject for their next project. They found it in the music of Duke Ellington. And they found themselves inspired to go beyond straightforward filmmaking, focusing instead on fostering collaboration between […]

June 29, 2020 0

News

Eighteenth Street Lounge to close after decades as a D.C. nightlife mainstay

A late-night haven for jazz in D.C. will disappear after the popular nightclub Eighteenth Street Lounge announced this week that it would close “indefinitely” in its current location after the pandemic. ESL operated for 25 years in a townhouse mansion near Dupont Circle. On weekends, the club drew an ever-present queue that often snaked halfway […]

June 27, 2020 0

Features

‘He was very powerful, but he was not loud:’ D.C.’s jazz community remembers Brother Ah

Brother Ah spent his life dedicated to music. He was a multi-instrumentalist, an educator, a radio DJ, a philosopher. And as his colleagues in the D.C. community attest, it was that flexibility — that willingness to serve the music in any way that was needed — that left an impression on all of them. Brother Ah, […]

June 24, 2020 0

News

DC Jazz Festival hosts a week of live webcasts to benefit local musicians

The DC Jazz Festival, held annually in June, is postponed this year until at least the fall due to the COVID-19 pandemic. But the festival has announced a special online series every day next week, from this Sunday through June 29, under the “DCJazzFest From Home” brand. The DCJF is partnering with Live From Our […]

June 19, 2020 0

News

6 new D.C. jazz recordings

In spite of our strange new gig-less reality, the D.C. jazz scene has had a busy couple of weeks of recording releases. Here’s a quick collection of some notable new songs from the city’s scene. Dante’ Pope & Wes Felton feat. Stan Davis, ‘Big Facts’ Dante’ Pope, a singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist who is all over […]

June 15, 2020 0

Interviews

Nicole Saphos brings in new voices — and refines her own — on ‘Takoma Sessions’

On her third album, the bassist and singer-songwriter Nicole Saphos introduces a slightly more intimate voice. She also introduces two voices that are entirely new. In a late 2018 performance at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Saphos and her trio of John Lee (guitar) and Ele Rubenstein (drums) first welcomed vocalists Sara Curtin and Maureen […]

June 12, 2020 0

Interviews

‘This is Black America standing up:’ a conversation with Katea Stitt about jazz and justice in D.C.

The murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor at the hands of law enforcement have prompted a watershed moment in the centuries-long fight to overcome the systems that perpetuate racist violence in our country. In that struggle for liberation, Black musicians have always been on the front lines. All art is inherently political — and that’s […]

June 5, 2020 0

News

Samuel Prather has a message for right now: ‘Love Always Wins in the End’

Samuel Prather admits that he cannot remember which unarmed Black person’s murder it was that first inspired him to begin working on “Love Always Wins In The End.” There have been far too many to be sure. Prather said he’d been tinkering with the lyrics and the video for years before the song became the […]

June 3, 2020 0