WKCR
2025.01.20 Uri Caine on Chick Corea and Herbie Hancock
In the seventies, when Uri Caine was discovering the piano, two dominant influences were Chick Corea and Herbie Hancock. Both were in their thirties, [...]
2025.01.06 Eric Person on David Murray
In the early 1980s, when saxophonist Eric Person was coming up, one big question that was being addressed was how to combine the free-swinging improv of the [...]
2024.11.25 Leon Gruenbaum on Burnt Sugar
Burnt Sugar The Arkestra Chamber is renowned for "...never playing anything the same way once." Drawing inspiration from Duke Ellington, Sun Ra, [...]
2024.10.14 Ken Wessel on Badal Roy
Here's another Ph.D. topic for you: Miles Davis vs. Ornette Coleman. Both blazingly original innovators lived most of their lives in Manhattan and they were [...]
2024.08.19 Melvin Gibbs on Sun Ra
Tonight (8/19) bassist/composer Melvin Gibbs joins host Mitch Goldman for a Deep Focus on Sun Ra with unheard rarities from the WKCR archives. [...]
2024.07.08 Matt Garrison on Miles Davis 1981
People love to talk about Miles Davis reinventing himself and reinventing the music. They talk about the First Great Quintet in the fifties, the [...]
2024.06.24 Eric Person on Art Blakey
Listen to any song by Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers. There will be no question in your mind about who is driving the bus or who is riding on [...]
2024.06.10 Vernon Reid on Gil Scott-Heron
We don't hear enough about Gil Scott-Heron these days. And when we do, we often get the same few crumbs: his invention of a sort of proto-hiphop, some [...]
2024.05.13 Gary Lucas on Rahsaan Roland Kirk
"Who has the hippest chops in the world?"
If you're going to ask that question on a record, you had better have the nuts to back it up. I mean, [...]
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 [...]