Music

Music & Culture

Pianist Craig Taborn practices the art of instant composing on 'Shadow Plays'

2:55pm December 08, 2021

by Kevin Whitehead

Taborn is one the most inventive and resourceful pianists in improvised music today. He has a new solo album — his first in a decade — and, like the previous one, it's a stunner.

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Music & Culture

Neil Young breaks down 'Barn,' track-by-track

1:30pm December 08, 2021

Surrounded by an intimate group of trusted friends and musicians in a Colorado barn, Neil Young was able to make a new album just the way he wanted.

Jazz musician Barry Harris performing at the Henry Fonda Theatre in 2006.

Music & Culture

Barry Harris, beloved jazz pianist devoted to bebop, dies at 91

12:21pm December 08, 2021

by Mark Stryker

Barry Harris, one of the leading musicians to emerge from Detroit's modern jazz explosion in the 1940s and '50s, died Wednesday.

The composer Julius Eastman died in 1990, but his music is experiencing a renaissance. The Los Angeles-based group Wild Up's jubilant recording of his 1974 work Femenine is one of the most remarkable classical albums of the year.

Music & Culture

The Top 10 Classical Albums of 2021

8:26am December 08, 2021

by Tom Huizenga

Discover a broad range of the year's best classical albums, from groundbreaking teenage percussionists and innovative opera singers to fierce orchestral composers and brainy pianists.

Arooj Aftab performs a Tiny Desk (home) concert.

Music & Culture

Arooj Aftab: Tiny Desk (Home) Concert

6:45am December 08, 2021

by Tom Huizenga

Watch the Pakistan-born singer and her masterful band perform songs of love and loss in a decrepit, yet generously resonant, convent in Brooklyn.

Greg Tate, a powerful chronicler and critic of Black life and culture, has died at 64

5:18pm December 07, 2021

by Andrew Limbong

Tate was a longtime staff writer at The Village Voice, where he documented Black art and culture. He eventually became a leading figure in cultural criticism.

Three of the student authors of Who Is Florence Price? (left to right: Sebastián Núñez, Hazel Peebles and Sophia Shao), joined by their English teacher, Shannon Potts.

These NYC kids have written the history of an overlooked Black female composer

4:18pm December 07, 2021

by Anastasia Tsioulcas

A group of sixth, seventh and eighth grade students realized there was no children's book about the composer Florence Price. So they wrote, illustrated and published their own.