Kevin Whitehead

Kevin Whitehead is the jazz critic on NPR's Fresh Air with Terry Gross.

Widely written on American and improvised musics, Whitehead's articles have appeared in publications such as the Chicago Sun-Times, Village Voice, and Down Beat. He is the author of Why Jazz: A Concise Guide (2010) and New Dutch Swing (1998), and the jazz columnist for eMusic.com. His essays have appeared in numerous anthologies including Da Capo Best Music Writing 2006, Jazz: The First Century and The Cartoon Music Book.

Whitehead taught at the University of Kansas and Goucher College. He lives outside of Austin, Texas.

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Music Reviews
7:46 am
Wed April 18, 2012

Jenny Scheinman's 'Mayhem' Hard To Pin Down

Credit Michael Gross
Jenny Scheinman's (left) quartet represents players raised on and used to playing all kinds of music.

Originally published on Wed April 18, 2012 9:24 am

Violinist Jenny Scheinman's band and new album are both called Mischief and Mayhem. The record was made just after her quartet played a week at the Village Vanguard, but despite the jazz cred of regular Vanguard appearances, their stylistically fluid music draws on a lot of traditions.

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Music Reviews
8:11 am
Wed March 21, 2012

Clark Terry: Not Just A Jazz Jester

Credit Courtesy of the artist
Clark Terry.

Writing about Clark Terry in the past, I've grumbled that this great and distinctive trumpeter had long been stereotyped as a pixie-ish jazz jester. There's more range and deep blues feeling to his sound than that. It wasn't all sweetness when he was growing up poor in St. Louis, touring in the Deep South before WWII or breaking the color line with TV orchestras in 1960.

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Music Reviews
8:04 am
Mon March 12, 2012

Forgotten Gems From The Dave Brubeck Quartet

Credit Hulton Archive / Getty Images
The Dave Brubeck Quartet.

After Dave Brubeck signed with Columbia Records in the mid-1950s, his quartet made a few albums a year, and now that material has been collected in a 19-disc box set called The Dave Brubeck Quartet: The Complete Columbia Studio Albums Collection.

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Music Reviews
9:01 am
Tue February 7, 2012

Matt Wilson: Trios, Quartets And 'Don Knotts'

Credit Courtesy of the artist
Like a comedian, drummer Matt Wilson knows about offhand dexterity and split-second timing.

Brooklyn drummer Matt Wilson keeps busy with many bands and projects — other people's and his own. Two new Wilson albums find him as part of a co-op all-star trio, and at the helm of one of his own quartets. Part of Wilson's appeal is that he keeps things light, in a good way.

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Music Reviews
9:46 am
Thu January 26, 2012

Jimmy Owens Navigates Monk's 'Brilliant Corners'

Credit Stephanie Myers
Jimmy Owens mostly dresses Monk's tunes for uptown wear — Monk the Harlem jam session swinger.

In 1974, trumpeter Jimmy Owens helped prepare and played on a Carnegie Hall concert of Thelonious Monk's music. On the night in question, the orchestra had a surprise soloist: Monk himself. It was one of the pianist's last public performances.

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Music Reviews
10:00 am
Wed January 11, 2012

François Houle And Benoît Delbecq's Dream State

It's been more than a decade since clarinetist François Houle and pianist Benoît Delbecq's previous recording, but Because She Hoped proves that they can a strike a mood together quickly. That quiet, misterioso air is one specialty, conjuring a dream state: a slow-motion sleepwalk.

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Music Reviews
7:57 am
Wed December 14, 2011

'Three Views' Of Trumpeter Dave Douglas

Credit Zoran Orlic
Dave Douglas' Three Views box set collects three very different quintet albums, featuring So Percussion, his Brass Esctasy band and a group featuring Ravi Coltrane and Vijay Iyer.

Originally published on Fri August 3, 2012 11:18 am

There's a nice contrast among the three quintets heard on Dave Douglas' Three Views, sketching out some of his interests. There's no overlapping repertoire or personnel. The Orange Afternoons session features the elastic rhythm trio of pianist Vijay Iyer, Linda Oh on bass and drummer Marcus Gilmore.

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Music Reviews
9:09 am
Tue December 6, 2011

Thelonious Monk And More: 'Jazz Icons' In Kinescopes

Credit Erich Auerbach / Getty Images
On the sixth Jazz Icons DVD series, Thelonious Monk plays a rare solo piano gig in 1969.

Originally published on Fri August 3, 2012 11:18 am

Jazz has long been a staple of European television programming. American musicians on tour frequently turn up on the tube, caught live or in a studio. That's partly because such shows are relatively cheap to produce, and because jazz makes for good cultural programming.

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Music Reviews
8:51 am
Thu November 17, 2011

Miles Davis' Great, Often Bizarre 1967 Quintet

Credit New York Daily News Archive / Getty Images
Miles Davis performs at the 1967 Newport Jazz Festival.

Most of the material from Live in Europe 1967 has surfaced before — the set is subtitled The Bootleg Series, Vol. 1 — but the Belgian concert that performance comes from makes its debut here. This Miles Davis quintet was consistently amazing, not least on its last big tour, when Davis' trumpet chops were in good shape.

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Music Reviews
8:02 am
Mon November 14, 2011

Two South-American Jazz Fusions (No, Not That Kind)

Jazz has always drawn on the syncopated rhythms of Cuban music, and occasionally draws on other new world strains, like Brazilian bossa nova in the 1960s. But that interaction between North and South is ongoing.

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