Nate Chinen
Nate Chinen has been writing about jazz for more than 20 years.
He spent a dozen of them working as a critic for The New York Times, and helmed a long-running column for JazzTimes.
He is author of Playing Changes: Jazz For the New Century, published in hardcover by Pantheon in 2018, and on paperback by Vintage in 2019. Hailed as one of the Best Books of the Year by NPR, GQ, Billboard, and JazzTimes, it's a chronicle of jazz in our time, and an argument for the music's continuing relevance. It has also been published internationally, in Italian and Spanish editions.
A thirteen-time winner of the Helen Dance–Robert Palmer Award for Excellence in Writing, presented by the Jazz Journalists Association, Chinen is also coauthor of Myself Among Others: A Life in Music, the 2003 autobiography of festival impresario and producer George Wein, which earned the JJA’s award for Best Book About Jazz.
Chinen was born in Honolulu, to a musical family: his parents were popular nightclub entertainers, and he grew up around the local Musicians Union. He went to college on the east coast and began writing about jazz in 1996, at the Philadelphia City Paper. His byline has also appeared in a range of national music publications, including DownBeat, Blender and Vibe. For several years he was the jazz critic for Weekend America, a radio program syndicated by American Public Media. And from 2003 to 2005 he covered jazz for the Village Voice.
His work appears in Best Music Writing 2011 (Da Capo); Pop When the World Falls Apart: Music in the Shadow of Doubt (Duke University Press, 2012), and Miles Davis: The Complete Illustrated History (Voyageur Press, 2012).
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Two Cuban pianists, two Los Angeles scene stalwarts, and a hard-bop veteran: such is the musical abundance in this week's Take Five. -
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Our online presentation features remarks from Wayne Shorter, along with testimonials from a starry array of his proteges and peers. -
The 2022 season of Capital One City Parks Foundation SummerStage features an impressive lineup of improvisers, on and off the 30th annual Charlie Parker Jazz Festival. -
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Photographer John Rogers combines jazz portraits with street scenes in a haunting and handsome new book. -
Hear radiant new music by pianists Nduduzo Makhathini, Tord Gustavsen and Cameron Graves, trombonist Kalia Vandever, and saxophonist Daniel Rotem. -
Donald Harrison preserves legacy as an alto saxophonist and composer, and as Big Chief of the Congo Nation Afro-New Orleans Cultural Group. He is this year’s recipient of the A.B. Spellman NEA Jazz Masters Fellowship for Jazz Advocacy. -
"I've never really defined myself within a genre of music," says Stanley Clarke, on the cusp of his induction as an NEA Jazz Master. "I play bass." -
For more than 60 years, Billy Hart has brought an earthy, exacting style to the art of jazz drumming. He officially joins the ranks of NEA Jazz Masters this week.
