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Original image by Plastic Sax.
*The Kansas City Jazz Orchestra announced its 2026-27 season. Details are available here.
*Nick Hmeljak is among the artists selected for Charlotte Street Foundation’s two-year studio residency program.
Bandcamp’s new download feature is wreacking havoc on my Bluetooth systems. Instead of resuming where I left off listening on streaming services, I’m regularly confronted with bursts of improvised sound from the recently released Forge. Familiarity via involuntary heavy rotation has made the recording by Chicago’s Jason Stein, Kansas City’s Seth Andrew Davis and Kevin Cheli of St. Louis, seem as breezy as a Sabrina Carpenter hit. I’ve come to love being walloped by Forge. While the title track is a titanic roar, much of Forge contains ample space. The contrast between the analog sound of Stein’s woodwinds and Cheli’s rattling percussion with Davis’ electric guitar is pleasing. Far from being nuisances, the ghosts in my machines favoring Forge have done me a great service.
Loren Broaddus leads a band at Quality Hill Playhouse on Friday, June 5. The French horn specialist and three of Kansas City’s most accomplished musicians pay tribute to Ornette Coleman in the embedded video.
Original image by Plastic Sax.
*KCUR reports on a fire that has temporarily closed Green Lady Lounge. The live music schedule at the adjacent venue Black Dolphin has expanded accordingly.
*From a press release: Kansas City jazz has a story worth celebrating, protecting, and continuing to grow. That story lives in our musicians, our neighborhoods, and in the spaces where people come together to experience the music. Today, we’re excited to share a new chapter in that story. Kansas City Jazz ALIVE, in partnership with Music Across Borders, is proud to help welcome 515 Music Hub, a new creative space dedicated to live music, collaboration, and community in the heart of Kansas City. Together, we are expanding access, supporting artists, and building connections that extend beyond our city, ensuring the Kansas City sound continues to thrive for generations to come.
A locally based musician recently tipped me off to a 2024 release featuring Kansas City vibraphonist Peter Schlamb. The recommendation was the first I’d heard of the recording. I wouldn’t ordinarily feature an album released 25 months ago, but Quintet Music is a brilliant distillation of much of what I love most in contemporary improvised music.
Thrillingly ferocious, guitarist Travis Reuter’s self-released album is imbued with uncommon musicianship, vision and recklessness. Hearing Schlamb’s gonzo solo over the first-call rhythm section of bassist Harish Raghavan and drummer Tyshawn Sorey on “Interlude 1 (Schlamb)” is thrilling. Saxophonist Mark Shim matches Schlamb’s energy elsewhere.
Quintet Music received a handful of rave reviews from in-the-know writers at secondary outlets a couple years ago. It also received a nod from one voter in the 2024 Francis Davis Jazz Critics Poll. The figure would have doubled had I heard it as a new release. Schlamb’s characteristic reticence has rarely been more frustrating.
Pete Fucinaro leads a band at the Ship on Thursday, May 28. The saxophonist’s Little Windows was among Plastic Sax’s Favorite Albums of 2025.
Original image by Plastic Sax.
*Hermon Mehari is among the musicians featured in a series of France tv culture performance videos acknowledging the 100th anniversary of Miles Davis’ birth.
*Joe Dimino interviewed Alex Abramovitz and Back Alley Brass Band’s Matt Fillingham.
The jazz audience can be divided into two camps. A select group of fortunate fans rapturously drink, smoke and dance to the sound of organ jazz. Others- this correspondent included- suffer from allergies to the divisive form.
Yet even skeptics are likely to make an exception for In Rotation. The addition of vibraphone makes the latest album overseen by Kansas City organist Chris Hazelton an uncommon variant of the organ jazz tradition.
The arrangements focused on Peter Schlamb are particularly intriguing. The vibraphonist is best known for future-forward forms of jazz, but he’s fully conversant in conventional swing settings. Schlamb’s contribution makes the opening of an interpretation of the Billy Strayhorn composition “A Flower is a Lovesome Thing”- In Rotation’s most remarkable track- breathtaking.
Saxophonist Brett Jackson excels in playing the role of George Coleman to Hazelton’s Jimmy Smith. As on Hazelton’s 2023 album After Dark, Jackson’s romantic tone pushes the recording over the top. A master in every setting, drummer John Kizilarmut sets the pace with tasteful precision.
Countless potential listeners have yet to be exposed to organ jazz. Hazelton would almost certainly encourage novices to explore the discographies of his lodestars Everette DeVan and Dr. Lonnie Smith, but In Rotation is a fine place for novices to begin the process of determining if they love or loathe organ jazz.
Bass clarinetist Jason Stein, bassist Damon Smith and drummer Adam Shead top an impressive lineup of locally based and touring musicians at miniBar on Thursday, May 21. Stein, Smith and Shead are touring in support of their new album Five Nights in the Midwest.
Original image by Plastic Sax.
*A press release provides updates on Kansas City’s recent $3,200,000.00 reinvestment in the American Jazz Museum.
Born in 1929, raised in Kansas City and mentored by Jay McShann, the Los Angeles based Betty Bryant is an inimitable chanteuse. Naturally, Nothin' Better to Do, the latest album by the vocalist and pianist, is a timeless delight.
Immensely charming selections including the worldly “You Are Not My First Love” and the come-hither blues “I Can’t See for Lookin’” are capable of making listeners a mere quarter of Bryant’s age blush. The Kansas City-style “Mama Sue” and “He May Be Your Man” are similarly insinuating.
The Latin groove of “Time Was” and the cabaret musings of the undeservedly obscure Burt Bacharach and Hal David composition “Winter Warm” are unexpected changes of pace. The 96-year-old remains full of surprises.
Manor Fest is the rare multi-genre Kansas City music festival to feature more than a token jazz act in its lineup. Bobby Watson is billed second on the expansive bill of the 2026 edition of the event. Alber, Eddie Moore and Henry Scamurra are among the additional jazz acts booked at Manor Fest. Scamurra’s appearance in the festival’s second week is at 5:45 p.m. on Thursday, May 28, at PH Coffee. The saxophonist’s performance will be preceded by a singer-songwriter and followed by a rootsy rock band.
Original image by Plastic Sax.
*Alber chatted with KCUR’s Steve Kraske.
*Kansas City’s Michael Pronko promoted his book about jazz in Japan at an Italian jazz site. (Tip via PF.)
Festival bookers, wedding planners and organizers of corporate events in Kansas City must have Back Alley Brass Band on speed dial. The New Orleans-style brass band seems to play at the majority of the area’s high-profile gatherings. The group’s live presentation, work ethic and professionalism please the sorts of people accustomed to writing big checks. Some Bright Morning, Back Alley Brass Band’s latest album, is a bit less dependable. Funky and sophisticated, the opening instrumental “Superhero” is the ensemble’s best recorded track to date. Unfortunately, the remainder of the selections feature vocals. While sing-alongs to familiar material like “Hey Jude,” “Just the Two of Us” and “I’ll Fly Away” are bound to blossom in exuberant live settings, the vocals on Some Bright Morning are cringey. The good times roll at Back Alley Brass Band’s live shows. The band’s recordings are less of a sure bet.
Deborah Brown, the doyenne of Kansas City jazz, returns to the Blue Room on Friday, May 8. The embedded video captures the magnificent vocalist at a Slovenian jazz festival.
Original image by Plastic Sax.
*The new jazz venue Ted's Taproom recently opened at 1829 McGee Street.
*Here’s Kansas City’s video contribution to last week’s UNESCO “jazz day relay.”
A subset of Midwestern music aficionados between the ages of 35 and 65 know that much of the most exciting jazz of the 1990s and early 2000s was performed in grimy rock clubs. Removed from the stifling constraints of jazz purists and advocacy organizations, bands like Tulsa’s Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey and Kansas City’s Malachy Papers developed new tactics in a vibrant underground scene.
Somethin’ to Relax With, the latest release by Nolatet, is a mature variant of the pivotal movement. The band consists of Jacob Fred Odyssey’s Brian Haas, Malachy Papers’ Mike Dillon and the New Orleans stalwarts James Singleton and Johnny Vidacovich.
Recorded live in Tulsa, the album is an extension of Haas’ work with Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey and is a logical progression in Dillon’s adventurous career. Bolstered by the swinging bassist and drummer from the Big Easy, Haas and Dillon balance ornery defiance with deep-seated fluency in jazz traditions.
All six selections are alternately pensive and playful. Nolatet’s highbrow fun brings a disruptive punk sensibility to sounds ordinarily associated with Bobby Hutcherson and Thelonious Monk. Somethin’ to relax with? Sort of. Somethin’ to party with at a safe distance from conventional jazz culture? Definitely.
Old school or new school? That’s the decision facing celebrants of International Jazz Day in Kansas City on Thursday, April 30. Traditionalists are likely to favor The Count Basie Orchestra in the big band’s return to the Music Hall. Keyon Harrold, a trumpeter who integrates hip-hop and R&B into his jazz-based music, headlines an event overseen by the Mutual Musicians Foundation. The host promises attendees will join “a curated audience of creatives, professionals, tastemakers, and culture leaders.”
Original image by Plastic Sax.
*Marc Myers raves about Triological, the recently released album featuring Kansas City’s Steve Cardenas.
Original image by Plastic Sax.
Max Roach performed in Kansas City’s Jazz District in 1985. Abbey Lincoln appeared at the Folly Theater in 1994. We Insist! Max Roach's Freedom Now Suite, the 1961 protest album featuring the drummer and vocalist, remains a towering cultural touchstone.
Terri Lyne Carrington told an audience of several hundred that she and her band intended to conduct a “flip of the script” on We Insist! before the first note was played at the Folly Theater on Saturday, April 18. (I paid $37.50 for a balcony seat.)
Powered by Carrington’s ferocious drumming, the auspicious young trumpet star Milena Casado, guitarist Matthew Stevens and multi-instrumentalist Morgan Guerin were supplemented by poet and vocalist Christie Dashiell.
Given the caliber of the musicians, instrumental segments featuring agitated funk improvisations worked best. At ninety minutes, the concert’s brevity was its primary blemish. The musicians behaved as if they had a plane to catch.
It seemed natural to be in the presence of Roach and Lincoln decades ago. I’m now humbled to have shared moments in time with the icons. In furthering the legacies of Roach and Lincoln, Carrington and her colleagues will one day be fully recognized as similarly auspicious figures in the jazz continuum.