Jazz
André 3000 stopped by The Tonight Show on Monday night (Dec. 16) to chat with host Jimmy Fallon about his right-turn into the world of jazz and perform a rendition of one of the songs from his Grammy-nominated solo album New Blue Sun.
Three Stacks stressed to Jimmy that despite his name being on the cover and the LP being tagged as a “solo” project, it was truly a “collective effort.” Asked to describe the vibe of the all-instrumental, no rapping album that came out in November 2023, André said it’s definitely a “very open, trusting free-form exploration.”
Though some fans were bummed that the man widely consider to be one of the greatest MCs of all time put down the mic and picked up woodwinds, André revealed that the title of the first song on the album — “I Swear, I Really Wanted to Make a ‘Rap’ Album But This Is Literally the Way the Wind Blew Me This Time” — wasn’t a joke.
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He said that though for years he’s been “producing, making beats and still trying to do a vocal, rap kind of situation. Because I’m still a fan of rap. But that wasn’t on tap right now and that just happened to be what I was doing at the time. So I was like, ‘I enjoy this. Let me share it.’”
During a 17-year hiatus from releasing music as a lead artist, André dabbled in acting and became a kind of traveling minstrel meme among fans who delighted in posting videos of the MC strolling around coffee shops and airports playing one of his many flutes. “You know how when you have your phone you’re usually just scrolling and looking, I’ll play my flute,” he said. In fact, while in Philadelphia shooting a movie years ago, he would be spotted around town playing and people would come up to him and say, “‘you know it’s a game now. People are trying to find you and we’ll tweet and we’ll say, ‘Well, he’s at this park.’”
He also said that before each performance with his band they huddle and pump each other up with the phrase “fly free… that’s what we’re trying to do, we’re trying to really fly free with it. The reward is different, because you have to listen to every second to know what’s happening. It’s just a different muscle, a different exercise than going and performing verses and choruses that you’ve written. Both are rewarding in their own ways.”
Dré then came back later in the show to perform an edited version of the originally 13-minute song “BuyPoloDisorder’s Daughter Wears a 3000® Shirt Embroidered.”
Watch André 3000 on The Tonight Show below.
Lady Gaga scores her third No. 1 on Billboard’s Jazz Albums and Traditional Jazz Albums charts, as Harlequin debuts atop both tallies (dated Oct. 12). The companion set to her film Joker: Folie à Deux, earned 25,000 equivalent album units in the U.S. in the week ending Oct. 3, according to Luminate. Of that sum, 16,000 are traditional album sales.
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Gaga previously topped both rankings with her collaborative albums with Tony Bennett: Love for Sale (in 2021) and Cheek to Cheek (2014).
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Harlequin earns the biggest debut week, by units earned, for any jazz album, or traditional jazz album, since Love for Sale earned 41,000 units in its opening week (Oct. 16, 2021-dated charts).
Equivalent album units comprise album sales, track equivalent albums (TEA) and streaming equivalent albums (SEA). Each unit equals one album sale, or 10 individual tracks sold from an album, or 3,750 ad-supported or 1,250 paid/subscription on-demand official audio and video streams generated by songs from an album. All Oct. 12, 2024-dated charts will be posted in full on Billboard‘s website on Tuesday, Oct. 8. For all chart news, follow @billboard and @billboardcharts on both X, formerly known as Twitter, and Instagram.
Of Harlequin’s first-week units, streaming equivalent album-units comprise nearly 9,000 – equaling 11.34 million official on-demand streams of the album’s songs. The latter figure marks the biggest debut streaming week for a jazz album in over a year, since Laufey’s Bewitched bowed with 22.36 million clicks (Sept. 23, 2023-dated chart).
Harlequin also debuts at No. 20 on the overall Billboard 200 and No. 3 on both Vinyl Albums and Top Album Sales.
Jazz Albums and Traditional Jazz Albums rank the week’s most popular jazz and traditional jazz albums, respectively, by equivalent album units earned. The Billboard 200 ranks the week’s most popular albums across all genres, by units. Vinyl Albums and Top Album Sales tally the week’s top-selling vinyl albums, and overall albums, by traditional album sales.
Also on Top Album Sales, Billy Strings’ Highway Prayer debuts at No. 1 with 19,000 sold in its first week – the act’s biggest sales week ever. It’s also the first No. 1 for the artist. Chappell Roan’s The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess slips one spot to No. 2 (18,000; down 67%), Sabrina Carpenter’s Short n’ Sweet is steady at No. 4 (14,000; down 3%), Katy Perry’s 143 falls 2-5 (9,000; down 77%), Luke Bryan’s Mind of a Country Boy bows at No. 6 (nearly 8,000), Taylor Swift’s chart-topping Folklore vaults 33-7 (7,500; up 153% after a stock replenishment of its CD at retail), Stray Kids’ former leader ATE is a non-mover at No. 8 (7,000; down 6%), P1Harmony’s Sad Song falls 3-9 (6,000; down 77%) and Billie Eilish’s Hit Me Hard and Soft climbs 15-10 (nearly 6,000; up 8%).
Billboard’s Top Album Sales chart ranks the top-selling albums of the week based only on traditional album sales. The chart’s history dates back to May 25, 1991, the first week Billboard began tabulating charts with electronically monitored piece count information from SoundScan, now Luminate. Pure album sales were the sole measurement utilized by the Billboard 200 albums chart through the list dated Dec. 6, 2014, after which that chart switched to a methodology that blends album sales with track equivalent album units and streaming equivalent album units.
For Ezra Collective, things rarely go according to plan. At the start of “Ajala,” the vibrant highlight of new album Dance, No One’s Watching, drummer Femi Koleoso jokingly calls out a crowd who didn’t quite get the memo to clap along. When the London jazz group collected the U.K.’s Mercury Prize in 2023 for their album Where I’m Meant To Be, they collapsed in a heap on the ground, shocked at the news.
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Therein lies the appeal of their group’s emotionally charged hits: it’s OK to be caught off-guard. “The dancefloor can be a reflection of life,” Koleoso tells Billboard just hours ahead of its release on Partisan Records last week (Sept. 27). “Life’s not meant to be perfect, it’s meant to be honest. You can’t have a perfect life because so much of life is not in your control, but you can be honest about every situation you go through and try and weather the storm in a genuine way… that’s what all of the record is about.”
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Long a leader in the U.K.’s storied jazz scene, their new album looks set to take them to new heights. Dance, No One’s Watching could see the band’s first top 10 entry on the U.K.’s Official Album Chart. Later this year, they head to Wembley Arena for their biggest ever show and one of the jazz scene’s largest headline shows in the capital.
Made up of Koleoso, brother TJ (bass), Joe Armon-Jones (synths), Ife Ogunjobi (trumpet) and James Mollison (saxophone), Ezra Collective fuse elements of jazz, highlife, Afrobeats, hip-hop and more in their varied songs. Since meeting at a youth club focused on musicianship and jazz in their native London, the band have released three albums and collaborated with Loyle Carner, Jorja Smith, Kojey Radical and rising U.K. pop star Olivia Dean (the latter guests on new song “No One’s Watching Me”).
They’re one of many venerable independent jazz acts in the U.K. releasing consistently and meeting growing audiences. Last month saxophonist Nubya Garcia released her second studio album Odyssey, as did Nala Sinephro with the gorgeous Endlessness. It’s a scene with Ezra Collective at its core, and one that continues to flourish.
Koleoso discusses his contemporaries, why he wants to retain the giddiness of releasing music and how The Beatles and Fela Kuti inspired their new record.
How are you feeling about the release of the album?
Just so happy. It’s the best part of the journey. My technique is that once the masters approved I won’t listen to the album again until it’s released. Honestly, I’ve forgotten most of it! So when midnight strikes I will open Spotify and listen to it like everyone else. And that helps my excitement levels match everyone else’s.
We’ve been doing it a little while now – 12 years as Ezra Collective – and I’ve been playing music for most of my life, but I’ve still got quite a juvenile innocence and get bare excited when I see my name on Spotify. Once you lose that excitement you’re done, you know?
How does this record compare to what you’ve done previously?
The most recent record [2022’s] Where I’m Meant To Be was very much a documentation of our lockdown and Dance, No One’s Watching is the documentation of being let out again. It was looking at the dancefloor on the Ezra Collective world tour and then writing a narrative for them. So the feeling was a lot of freedom and excitement to be outside again.
What were those gigs like for you?
It was wonderful. You could feel the anticipation of people turning up to Ezra Collective gigs like “I am here to have a good night.” I could feel it. People would come with a smile on their face and a pair of leggings and beat-up trainers, and I could look at them like “you’re here to dance.” People in baggy t-shirts and a pair of jeans and I’m thinking, “Yeah, you didn’t even bring a jacket and it’s November, you are here to dance.” I’m so grateful for that and we ended up mirroring that energy up on stage.
How did you end up recording the album at Abbey Road Studios?
We felt if we were going to make a record documenting the dancefloor the only way for it to sound authentic was for it to have people dancing while we made it, and we needed a studio that had the space. It was never meant to be a live album but it was meant to feel live but sound like a studio record. So we needed people in the room dancing and vibing, but at the same time we needed the equipment to record every instrument’s detail at the highest level and that was the place where it was made the most possible.
That must have provided a unique challenge…
Yeah, but if you look back, other people have also done that. The Beatles did something similar with when they recorded Let It Be; they played the gig on the rooftop, and the recording of some songs from the roof concert made the album. It was the same with J.J.D. by Fela Kuti – it just sounds both deep in quality, but occasionally you hear someone scream. We were taking big inspirations from those types of albums in how we approached it. I’m really proud of how it’s come and you can feel the live elements in the album, but it seems on the sound system like a studio record.
It’s such a beautiful space, but what’s important about Abbey Road is that it’s not reserved to those who can afford it. It has to be for the music of today. You need Nia Archives, Loyle Carner and Dave and the band that are still in sixth form that you’ve never heard of. It needs to be a space that musicians aren’t intimidated by as that’s where you’ll get the best art.
Our first ever EP Chapter 7 was actually recorded at Abbey Road, but we only got in because an engineer snuck us in in the middle of the night and told us “you’ve got one hour before they kick you out” and we just played the songs once and that was it. This time it was nice to have permission to be there.
You won the Mercury Prize in 2023, a shock evident to yourself and the band. What was that moment like?
It was a crazy moment. It couldn’t have gone better. Because we were just excited about the nomination! But we’d honestly not even thought about winning. I told everyone to compose themselves and when they say someone else’s name, don’t be all upset about it. So when they said our name it was pure shock. That’s why we ended up on the floor. It was an unexpectedly beautiful moment. But it was a moment and then it’s back to normal the next day, you know? Which I’m grateful for.
The name Ezra Collective was a bit more recognizable after that moment. I think most of the U.K. music industry was aware of the band if they weren’t beforehand, but in terms of the band, I feel exactly the same as I did when we were in school and just started out. It was just me and my friends making songs and I was just grateful for every ounce of attention they got.
Olivia Dean provides vocals on the wonderful “No One’s Watching Me.” What was that session like?
She is so beautifully talented. It’s the perfect kind of session. She came into the studio and we just spoke about life, about how she was, and I asked her to tell me a bit about what dancing meant to her, and she was attracted to the idea that no one’s watching so just move and get on with it. So we discussed that and she was in the booth on her own with a pen and paper and after a couple of hours she said she was ready to record.
I pressed the red button and this wonderful sound and most beautiful voice came out of her. And I remember instantly after she finished I was like “yeah, you can go home.” Like she didn’t need to add anything, it was so perfect. I think she was shocked at how quickly and easily she wanted to move on but I knew that perfection had been captured immediately.
We recently spoke to Gilles Peterson who featured you on the compilation We Out Here in 2018 alongside your contemporaries like Nubya Garcia, Moses Boyd and more. He discussed the fact that your scene knows the value of the community you’re creating that an outsider cannot replicate. Does that ring true to you?
Yeah that rings true. The word community and collective is more important than the name. It’s about how you’re investing into the community and people around you. That’s what the Ezra is all about, and that’s why I’m so proud to be considered a part of the U.K. jazz scene because it’s such a beautiful community.
Later this year you’re headlining Wembley Arena. How are you feeling about it?
I feel great! What a crazy thing to be doing, but I couldn’t be more excited. The game plan is the same it’s always been. There’s not an ounce of nerves. I’m sure on the day there might be a wobble but right now I’m feeling really great.
Was there any hesitation in leveling up to a venue like that?
Nah… we knew we’d be fine [laughs]. The moment we played outside of a pub full of my friends and my family and there were people we didn’t know, that was when we knew we could do anything. It’s the same feeling when we did Ronnie Scott’s, Islington Assembly Hall, the Roundhouse, Hammersmith Apollo, Royal Albert Hall, it’s all the same feeling: it’s like, “Wow, if we can do that then we can do this.” So that’s the energy we’re walking into it with.
Herb Alpert laughs when he says that his sister Mimi — who at 98 is nine years his senior — often asks him, “Why are you doing these concerts? Why are you traveling? Why do you want to do that?” But the 89-year-old trumpet-playing music legend has a ready answer.
“I have to explain to her that it gives me energy to do it,” Alpert — who just released his 50th studio album, appropriately titled 50 — tells Billboard via Zoom. “I’m not on a victory tour here. It’s not about that. It’s that I love doing it. I love to play the horn. I love to play the horn. I love playing with great musicians. I love doing it. I’m a right-brain guy; I play, I’m painting for over 50 years, sculpting for over 40. It just gives me reason to be.”
He’s quick to add however, that “this is landmark year for me. I can’t believe I’ve recorded 50 albums out there. I’ve been married (to singer Lani Hall) 50 years this year. A lot of things have happened in my life that are so startling. I never dreamed of having a career like I’ve had. I’m certainly grateful for it.”
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It’s hard to come up with a superlative that definitively captures Alpert’s career. Born in Los Angeles into a family where everybody played an instrument, Alpert started on trumpet when he was eight, studied at the University of Southern California and played in the Trojan Marching Band and the U.S. 6th Army Band.
He began writing songs during the late ‘50s and putting out records of his own, first billed as Dore (his given name) Alpert, in 1960. Since then, he’s sold more than 74 million records worldwide with his Tijuana Brass band and on his own; placed 39 songs on the Billboard Hot 100 (including two No. 1s); won eight Grammy Awards; received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award; won a Tony; got inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2006; and received National Medal of the Arts in 2013.
Alpert was also the “A” in the famed A&M Records label, which he started in 1962 with Jerry Moss. Moss passed away 13 months ago, and another of A&M’s stalwarts, Brazilian keyboardist and Brasil ’66 bandleader Sergio Mendes, died earlier this month — another death that hit close to home for Alpert, who signed the group to A&M and produced its 1966 debut album, which remained on the Billboard 200 for more than two years and was voted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2012. It was Mendes who introduced Alpert to Hall, too, when she was part of Brasil ’66.
“He was an extraordinarily gifted musician. We just hit it off,” Alpert says of Mendes, adding that he and Hall spoke with him almost daily during the last year of his life. “He was a real person. He was excited about so many things. He loved great food. He loved great wine. He loved great restaurants. He spoke several languages. He was into life. He was a very unusual guy. He’s missed by everyone who came into contact with him.”
Alpert’s record of having four albums simultaneously in the Billboard top 10 back in 1966, meanwhile, was matched last year by none other than Taylor Swift.
“I sent her a nice little FaceTime, and I was very happy for her,” Alpert says. “I think she’s a really good artist. I don’t actually follow her music. I hear a couple of things, but I like her. She has a lot of integrity. She understands her audience. She’s very sensitive. She’s smart. I don’t think that record is carved in stone; I like to see other artists jump in there, too. I have other records, so it’s alright.”
What’s most impressive and inspiring is that Alpert is still doing it, and also planning for the future. He’s released a dozen albums since 2010 — eight of which debuted in the top 10 of the Billboard Jazz Albums chart. He approached the 10-track 50 much like he did his other releases.
“I don’t even think about it as being an album,” he explains. “I have a studio at home here, and I just record at my whim, individual songs and melodies that just touch me…. I don’t have a master plan for recording an album. I don’t have a concept. I just take songs that I like, and when I feel it’s worthy of putting out there for other people to listen to, I put out an album. But really I’m just trying to entertain myself more than anything.”
50 features Alpert’s usual mix of original compositions and covers. One of those covers — The Chords’ 1954 hit “Sh-Boom (Life Could Be a Dream)” — is particularly special for him.
“I was kind of a snob with classical music until I heard ‘Sh-Boom,’” Alpert recalls. “I was in high school, and it was the first time I heard a song like that. There was something about it…. I remember sitting down at a friend’s house who had the radio on, listening to this song, thinking, ‘I like that. I like the feeling of that song.’ I really didn’t understand what the lyric was about ’til much later, but I liked the harmonies and the feeling. That song got me on to pop music and got me thinking about some of the songs that were out there in that period. Then I started listening to jazz and never looked back.”
Alpert maintains that his litmus for music has remained the same throughout the decades. “Melody reigns supreme,” he says. “Any artist who’s had success over the years has to have good taste when it comes to melody. You can have a fabulous lyric and terrible melody and I don’t think that song’s gonna go very far. But you can have a fabulous melody with a pretty good lyric and that’ll go far. And if you have a fabulous lyric with a fabulous melody, i.e. Burt Bacharach and Hal David and all those sophisticated songs they did, it hits. Even with jazz, after expressing a melody all of a sudden they’ll improvise on the chord changes of the particular song and invent a whole new melody. That’s exciting.”
As he reaches this year’s milestones, Alpert is already eyeballing the future. He plans to release a recording of “The Christmas Song” for this holiday season (“It touches me, and I feel like a lot of people might feel the same”) and reports that “I have another Christmas album in my head.” And while he and Hall have concert dates books into mid-December, next February Alpert plans to hit the road with a revived version of the Tijuana Brass, the band he led from the early ‘60s into the mid-70s and released hits such as the Billboard Hot 100 top 10 “The Lonely Bull” and the Billboard 200-topping 1965 album Whipped Cream & Other Delights.
“A lot of people have asked; they want to hear that Tijuana Brass sound again, so I’m gonna do it and I’m excited about it,” he says. “I always like the music. It always gave me a good feeling when I hear it, and I know a lot of people feel the same. It’s gonna be fun for me to revisit that whole sound again and play some of the old standards — ‘The Lonely Bull,’ ‘Spanish Flea,’ ‘This Guy’s In Love With You.’” He also plans to include his 1979 hit “Rise” in the repertoire, one of his two Hot 100 toppers (the other being “This Guy’s In Love With You”).
And beyond all that? “I hope to keep living,” Alpert says with a laugh. “Honestly, I don’t know if there’s anything I’m missing. I play the horn every day. I’d like to be able to play a little better bebop, but that’s an inch at a time. There’s not much, though. It’s been a great life.”
André 3000 had an interesting way of describing his jazz career.
During a recent interview with the Recording Academy, Stacks was asked whom he considers his peers now that he’s venturing into a different genre. “A long line of historical bands like Sun Ra, the Chicago Art Ensemble. Even rapper Lil B,” he answered. “I was joking to myself. I was like, ‘I’m almost the Lil B of this type of music.’ Lil B is… they call it ‘Based Rap.’ My son actually turned me on to Lil B.”
He then expanded on his Based God comparison, saying, “a lot of what he’s doing is made up or improv or really reactionary.” Adding, “It’s not this studied, perfect thing. Because I came up in the ‘90s, we came up with Nas and Wu-Tang and some of the [people] considered the best rappers around. It was about clarity. It was more of a studied kind of thing. A person like Lil B is not studied at all. But the way the kids respond to him, it’s because of that. It’s kind of like a punk way of rapping, and I like it. [And what I’m doing is] almost like punk jazz or punk spiritual jazz. It’s pure feeling.”
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Elsewhere in the interview, the Atlanta rap legend was asked about his visibility during the past year or so being that he’s tried to shy away from the spotlight in the past. He admitted that he somewhat prefers this era of fame because the lights aren’t as bright. “It’s almost like [laughs] superstar lite, like Coke Lite or Coke Zero. It’s like Superstar Zero,” he quipped. “You’ve got the fame, but it’s not as intense as it was before. It’s different. A lot of people are weirded out about the direction, so it’s not the same intensity of the whole world onboard with you — which is kind of cool for my age and tastes. I like this pace a lot, compared to just being all over everywhere all the time.”
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He also released the album film Listening to the Sun and said it’s to help remind fans that he dropped an instrumental flute tape. “The album has been out a year, and we recently dropped this film that we did to the album that came out a year ago, but we just released it on YouTube,” he said. “So, a lot of people are just now discovering the album. It’s like, ‘Yeah, we heard something about this flute thing,’ but they never heard it. Now that this video is out, a lot of people are hearing it again, or for the first time. So it’s a cool thing that you kind of get this second wave of people that are just now hearing it.”
Marsha Ambrosius is setting up shop for one night only with Billboard at Blue Note Jazz Club in New York City tonight — but you don’t need to be near Manhattan to tune in. Featuring songs from her new album Casablanco and beyond, the nine-time Grammy nominee’s performance at the famed jazz club will be […]
Marshall Allen, Marilyn Crispell, Chucho Valdés, and Gary Giddins are set to receive the NEA Jazz Masters Fellowship. They will be honored on Saturday, April 26, 2025, at a free concert at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. in Washington, D.C.
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Maria Rosario Jackson, PhD, chair of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) said in a statement: “We are delighted to welcome these four luminaries to the ranks of NEA Jazz Masters. They have each in their own way played a crucial role in the nurturing and development of this art form and demonstrate the immense diversity and creativity found in jazz today. We look forward to working together with the Kennedy Center on events next April that will celebrate their achievements and inspire new audiences and musicians to embrace jazz.”
“This class of NEA Jazz Masters represents the finest in free-thinking musicians,” said Jason Moran, Kennedy Center artistic director for jazz. “Each has been an active and integral part of communities that have pushed the music forward to new heights.”
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Here are thumbnail sketches of the four honorees:
• Marshall Allen’s inventive and distinctive saxophone playing, as well as his band arrangements, have made him a major force in jazz going into his hundredth year. He is best-known for his work with Sun Ra, recording and performing with him from the 1950s until Sun Ra’s death in 1993, and taking over the leadership of the Sun Ra Arkestra for the past 30 years. He received a Grammy nomination two years ago for best large jazz ensemble album for Swirling.
• Since emerging on the scene in the late 1970s, Marilyn Crispell has become one of the most original and sought-after avant-garde jazz pianists and composers. Her adventurous and distinctive style was influenced by her first loves in jazz, John Coltrane and Cecil Taylor.
• Originally from Cuba, pianist, bandleader, composer, and arranger Chucho Valdés is one of the most influential figures in the world of Latin and Afro-Cuban jazz. In a career spanning more than 60 years, Valdés has fused elements of the Afro-Cuban music tradition, jazz, classical music, rock, and more into his distinctive style. Valdés has won seven Grammys over a 42-year span (1980-2022).
• Gary Giddins has been one of the leading critics in the field of jazz for more than 50 years, having written books as well as essays for The New York Times, New Yorker, Esquire, and many other publications, and the “Weather Bird” column for The Village Voice. As a teacher, he has spurred new generations of jazz fans at several universities. Giddins won a Grammy for best album notes in 1987 for the Frank Sinatra collection, The Voice: The Columbia Years 1943-52. He was also nominated in that category for his notes for collections by Duke Ellington and Art Pepper.
Giddins is this year’s recipient of The A.B. Spellman NEA Jazz Masters Fellowship for Jazz Advocacy. The award is given to those who have made major contributions to the appreciation, knowledge, and advancement of this distinctively American art form.
Since 1982, the NEA has awarded 177 fellowships to great figures in jazz, including Kenny Barron, Terence Blanchard, Carla Bley, Dave Brubeck, Terri Lyne Carrington, Betty Carter, Stanley Crouch, Roy Eldridge, Paquito D’Rivera, Quincy Jones, Sun Ra, Dianna Reeves, and Henry Threadgill.
The NEA Jazz Masters Fellowships are awarded to living individuals on the basis of nominations from the public. NEA Jazz Masters Fellowships are $25,000 and can be received once in a lifetime. Visit the NEA’s website for detailed information and to submit nominations.
The deadline for nominations for the next class of honorees is Oct. 31, 2024.
Blue Note Entertainment Group and Black Radio Productions have unveiled the lineup for their newly announced Napa Valley event, Blue Note Jazz Festival Presents: The Black Radio Experience, hosted by Sway Calloway, Aug 30 to Sept 1.
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Inspired by the event’s Artist in Residence — Grammy-winning pianist, artist, producer and jazz great Robert Glasper — The Black Radio Experience “is an immersive journey into the soul of music, transcending boundaries and celebrating the rich tapestry of Black culture,” a press release announcing its launch explains.
“Every year our festival in Napa brings a unique vibe, and this year we are bringing you the Black Radio Experience during Labor Day weekend with a dope list of artists for an exclusive hang,” Glasper said in a statement.
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Unlike new festival properties that have sprung up recent years like Friends in Lovers festival in Las Vegas and Lionel Richie and Diana Ross’s inaugural Fool In Love Festival in Los Angeles – which feature more than 100 artists spread out over a huge festival ground — The Black Radio Experience is a smaller, intimate experience snuggled in to the The Meritage Resort & Spa in Napa. Headliners include John Legend, Jill Scott and André 3000, and performances by Andra Day, Common, Nile Rodgers, Ledisi and more.
“This year’s event promises an even more boutique, intimate, and exclusive vibe than ever before, presenting an unparalleled caliber of iconic artists,” said Alex Kurland, director of programming of Blue Note. “Robert Glasper’s vision and inspiration shape the talent and tone of the entire experience,” stated Kurland.
The inaugural festival took place on June 1, 2011, to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the Blue Note Jazz Club in New York City. In 2022, a Napa Valley Blue Note Jazz Festival was launched at Charles Krug Winery in St. Helena.
The next Black Radio Experience event will feature three full days performances across two stages and a wine cave venue with music icons against the backdrop of Napa Valley. The event will include Chef Darryl Bell’s ‘In the Vineyard’ Stateline Road Smokehouse, where he combines his Kansas City roots with Michelin training and access to Napa Valley’s newest premier steakhouse, Ember Steak, for all three days of the event and with more exclusive food experiences to come.
Hotel packages run from $2,250 per person to $3,400 per person, with three-day GA passes starting at $499 going on sale Thursday, May 16, 2024. Visit the website here for more information.
The Black Radio Experience
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David Sanborn, beloved jazz saxophonist who is credited on songs for Stevie Wonder, David Bowie and many more, died on Sunday (May 12). He was 78 years old.
A message posted to the musician’s social media page confirmed the news, noting that Sanborn had been battling prostate cancer for the past few years. “Mr. Sanborn had been dealing with prostate cancer since 2018, but had been able to maintain his normal schedule of concerts until just recently. Indeed he already had concerts scheduled into 2025,” the message reads. “David Sanborn was a seminal figure in contemporary pop and jazz music. It has been said that he ‘put the saxophone back into Rock ’n Roll.’”
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It is with sad and heavy hearts that we convey to you the loss of internationally renowned, 6 time Grammy Award-winning, saxophonist, David Sanborn. Mr. Sanborn passed Sunday afternoon, May 12th, after an extended battle with prostate cancer with complications. pic.twitter.com/VyW56OCkfc— DavidSanborn (@DavidSanborn) May 13, 2024
Throughout his career, Sanborn played alongside some of rock’s most iconic figures, both in the studio and onstage. Most notably, he toured with Wonder and played on his 1972 album, Talking Book. He also performed on Bowie’s classic, “Young Americans,” and toured with the late star.
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However, that’s just the tip of the iceberg of Sanborn’s illustrious career. Throughout his life, he’s recorded with musicians including B.B. King, Paul Simon, Cat Stevens, Bruce Springsteen, Elton John, Chaka Khan, Ron Carter, George Benson, Kenny Loggins, The Eagles, Aretha Franklin, Billy Joel, Roger Water, Eric Clapton, Mick Jagger and more.
Outside of recording music, Sanborn hosted a syndicated radio program, The Jazz Show, as well as a podcast called As We Speak. He also worked on a YouTube series called Sanborn Sessions with his nephew and brother-in-law.
Boney James becomes the first act to amass 20 No. 1s on Billboard’s Smooth Jazz Airplay chart. The venerable saxophonist reaches the milestone as featured on “Cigar Lounge” by Big Mike Hart, who leads with his first chart entry. James — born in Lowell, Mass., and raised in New Rochelle, N.Y. — first topped the […]