Deep Dive

"'Round Midnight" is one of the most widely recorded compositions. In this Deep Dive, Dr. Lewis Porter demonstrates how it embodies the collaborative relationship between Dizzy Gillespie and its credited composer, Thelonious Monk.

To state the obvious, this was a year like no other.For many of us, 2020 was a heartbreaker, a marathon slog, a stress engine — or all of the above. At…

Jazz historian, pianist and retired Rutgers-Newark Professor of Music Dr. Lewis Porter plans to spend more time on his own music these days.With that goal…

A Deep Dive into an immortal song, recorded 57 years ago.In this era when it has been necessary to affirm that Black Lives Matter, John Coltrane’s…

Candido Camero, a virtuoso percussionist who had a major hand — or more precisely, two of them — in the development of Afro-Cuban music, died today at his…

We’ve covered a lot of ground in the previous two installments of our look into A Love Supreme.In fact, I thought we’d only need two, but whenever I take…

In my previous installment of Deep Dive, I discussed my personal history with A Love Supreme, and examined John Coltrane’s own planning notes for the…

My book John Coltrane: His Life and Music begins with A Love Supreme. One day in 1978, I “heard” Coltrane reciting the poem in Part IV, “Psalm,” and it…

Often hailed as one of the greatest jazz films ever made, 'Jazz on a Summer's Day' was digitally remastered and issued on Blu-Ray and DVD in 2021. Nate Chinen offers his analysis and an abundance of historical context in this essay.

For 60 years, beginning in the early 1950s, pianist-composer Dave Brubeck was one of the most famous jazz musicians alive. Has he also been underrated as a pianist? Jazz historian Lewis Porter investigates, for Deep Dive.