Jazz Lives at Nextbop.com

Where Jazz Lives

Their stated mission is to “create a website with the sole purpose of introducing new and youthful listeners to jazz music.” Gotta love that, right? In just about six months they’ve been able to create a portal where jazz fans new and old can listen to the music of some of the hippest cats around, including Brad Mehldau, Stefan Harris, Christian Scott, Vijay Iyer, Ben Allison, Darcy James Argue and many, many more. And all of this for the pure love of the music.

Today, Anthony wrote a piece called “There Is No Box” in which he extols the virtues of jazz musicians remaking rock and pop tunes instead of solely relying on the standard canon. He sums it up with this paragraph:

Art does new things. It questions convention. It makes us think, critically of society or critically of performance. It makes us move, politically or on the dance floor. It makes us feel, adoration or vitriol. Art is by no means something you put in a box, especially not jazz music.

Amen, brother!

He also talks at length about my upcoming Nick Drake project, for which I’ve received a grant. It’s an honor and a thrill to be cited on one of my favorite sites, and to be included in such a great list of forward-thinking jazz musicians.

I hope you’ll take the time to read Anthony’s piece and poke around the web site a bit. I can guarantee you’ll be turned on to some incredible new music. If you want some music while you surf, just fire up their radio player and you’ll be treated to a sampling of their fine roster of musicians.