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2024.03.18 Graham Haynes on Woody Shaw

What confers greatness?  There are many pathways, the most obvious being distinctive playing.  Are there others?  What about brilliant [...]

2024.02.19 Frank London on Mongezi Feza

The stories that Black South African musicians tell about life under apartheid are searing.  Such oppressive and demeaning conditions are difficult to [...]

2024.02.05 William Hooker on Sonny Sharrock

Not all of our heroes have streets named after them but this one does.  So, will we be playing recordings of Sonny Sharrock on Deep Focus this Monday [...]

2024.01.22 Steven Bernstein on “The Don Cherry Tapes”

Tonight's Deep Focus (Jan. 22) is on Don Cherry, a wonderful and deeply missed friend of WKCR.  Back in the Eighties, Don was a frequent guest on Mitch [...]

2024.01.08 Peter Apfelbaum on Andrew Hill

This music is at its best when the artist is telling you exactly who they are.  Pianist Andrew Hill always seemed able to take us inside his internal [...]

2023.11.27 Tru Born (Anthony Michael Peterson) on “Finding the thread”

"Rock." "Jazz." "Classical." "Blues."  We rarely question the value of categorizing music.  These words are handy buckets to drop songs into: "I [...]

2023.10.09 Matthew Shipp on Albert Ayler

There is a point at which the usefulness of language ends.  You are simply not going to be able to express in words the sense of awe that you feel when [...]

2023.09.25 Henry Threadgill on John Gilmore and Von Freeman

"Easily Slip Into Another World," Henry Threadgill's recent memoir, is required reading for a full appreciation of tonight's Deep Focus.  It reveals the [...]

2023.09.04 Craig Harris on Sam Rivers

In the sixties, they explained evolution to us with that March of Progress illustration, a lockstep development from the proto-human Dryopithecus to modern [...]

2023.08.21 Roy Nathanson on Eric Dolphy

If Eric Dolphy's music were a school of painting it would be analytical cubism: planar and angular, multi-directional and austere,  But it's not [...]
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