Gary Bartz on Miles Davis, Jazz is Dead, and why 'improvisation' is a banned word

Aaron Parks on Little Big, Brad Mehldau, Kenny Barron and returning to Blue Note Records for By All Means

In this far-ranging interview, Aaron Parks talks being a “little smarty pants” who went to college at 14, dropping four albums as a piano wunderkind teen, getting tutored by Kenny Barron at the Manhattan School of Music, mentored on the road by Terence Blanchard, being signed by Blue Note Records, and releasing modern classic Invisible Cities (2008) – all by the age of 25 … He also inspirationally shares about his early sense of imposter syndrome, subsequent mental health crisis, and being the “chaos agent" of his own career “self sabotage". And the subsequent rebirth of recording the wonderful trio record Find the Way (2017) with Ben Street and Billy Hart, for Manfred Escher’s ECM Records, before forming the longtime working fusion band Little Big which ultimately saw him return to Blue Note – 15 years after he was dropped. Fun fact: that all happened because he cold-call sent head honcho Don Was a recording of the two-day session that became the spellbinding new album By All Means [https://www.bluenote.com/spotlight/aaron-parks-by-all-means/]– despite the fact a third Little Big record, also recorded in 2023, got the major-label treatment first. Parks has just two LPs left on his contract – and tells us he is hoping/planning to bag an acoustic trio live record at the Village Vanguard, as well as a fourth LIttle Big record.  A genuine, warm and inspiring encounter with a genuine, warm and inspiring human – caught mid-tour in Europe, days after surviving Super Typhoon Ragasa in Hong Kong.

Quincy Jones on Prince, Frank Sinatra, Herbie Hancock, and 60 years in music

Miles Davis, Frank Sinatra, Oprah Winfrey, Prince, Buzz Aldrin, Nelson Mandela, Robert De Niro, Count Basie, Frank Gehry, David Bowie, Will Smith, Paul McCartney, Herbie Hancock, Lesley Gore, Mick Jagger, Duke Ellington, Martin Scorsese and, of course, Michael Jackson… These are just a few of the names that came up in the 45 minutes I spent with Q, one magical afternoon. To celebrate a life lived to its fullest, one year after Jones’ death, I’m sharing the audio with the world for the first time.

Gary Bartz on Miles Davis, Jazz is Dead, and why 'improvisation' is a banned word

To celebrate the 85th birthday of Gary Bartz, we're sharing this freewheeling wide-ranging, previously unpublished interview for the first time. Hear the legend recount his career in his own words: from early sessions with Art Blakey to his charged Ntu Troupe records, working with McCoy Tyner and Donald Byrd, and of course, his years on the road with Miles Davis, immortalised on the sprawling masterpiece Live-Evil. We also chat about his recent collaborations with Maisha and Jazz is Dead. Most fascinating however are Bartz's insights into the American art form he's devoted his life to, and why he finds use of the word "improvisation" deeply offensive.

Sérgio Mendes on working with WIll.i.am, Antônio Carlos Jobim, Frank Sinatra, and the eternal bossa nova beat

To celebrate the life of Sérgio Mendes – one year after his death aged 83, on September 5, 2024, from complications associated with long Covid – I’m sharing this archive interview with the world’s greatest populariser of Brazilian music. Every time you hear a bad bossa nova cover of a rock song in a hotel lobby, you probably have this guy to blame. Because while Antônio Carlos Jobim gave Brazilian music its songbook, Mendes’ Brasil '66 band brought bossa’s irresistibly breezy beat to the world. I’ve made minor cuts for flow and focus, but otherwise this is just a fly-on-the-wall recording of an encounter I never intended to share with the world. In 30 short minutes we traced Mendes’ musical journey, from discovering jazz through Dave Brubeck’s “Take Five” and making his US debut with Cannonball Adderley, to touring with Frank Sinatra and playing the White House, to finding his music back in the limelight after collaborating with Will.i.am [http://will.i.am] on the hip-hop-flavoured comeback LP Timeless. The cover picture of this podcast is Sérgio Mendes backstage in Abu Dhabi, holding the cover story of the profile feature this interview resulted in [https://www.thenationalnews.com/arts/sergio-mendes-the-king-of-bossa-nova-plays-the-abu-dhabi-festival-1.85738].

Mary Halvorson on About Ghosts, Bill Frisell, freaky guitar pedals and her practise routine

In the wake of winning more Downbeat awards than even the magazine can count*, we called Mary Halvorson at home in Brooklyn, at 8pm on a Saturday night, to discuss the new artistic heights reached on About Ghosts – her fourth fantastic Nonesuch Records release utilising the peerless Amaryllis sextet. We traced her formative experiences, from falling under the tutelage of Anthony Braxton, to her early Firehouse 12 albums recorded while she still had an office job, through to solo masterpiece Meltframe, the vocal-led Code Girl project, and pinch-me collaborations with Bill Frisell and John Zorn.  For the six-string nerds, we enticed Halvorson to talk through how she conjures that trademark whiiinng effect only she knows how to make on guitar, and discussed learning her instrument as an ambidextrous human, and how much she really practises. *In 2023 Downbeat reported Halvorson had won guitarist of the year for seven consecutive polls [https://downbeat.com/news/detail/mary-halvorson-album-of-the-year-guitarist-of-the-year]. She definitely won again in 2024 and 2025 -- yet this year's write-up only acknowledges Halvorson winning [https://downbeat.com/news/detail/critics-capsules] "several times since 2017". Was the 2023 writer wrong, or the 2025 writer just lazy?