Kevin Whitehead
Kevin Whitehead is the jazz critic for NPR's Fresh Air with Terry Gross. Currently he reviews for The Audio Beat and Point of Departure.
Whitehead's articles on jazz and improvised music have appeared in such publications as Point of Departure, the Chicago Sun-Times, Village Voice, Down Beat, and the Dutch daily de Volkskrant.
He is the author of Play the Way You Feel: The Essential Guide to Jazz Stories on Film (2020), Why Jazz: A Concise Guide (2010), New Dutch Swing (1998), and (with photographer Ton Mijs) Instant Composers Pool Orchestra: You Have to See It (2011).
His essays have appeared in numerous anthologies including Da Capo Best Music Writing 2006, Discover Jazz and Traveling the Spaceways: Sun Ra, the Astro-Black and Other Solar Myths.
Whitehead has taught at Towson University, the University of Kansas and Goucher College. He lives near Baltimore.
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The jazz singer's 1960s concert career is amply documented on record, with live albums from Berlin, LA, Tokyo and the French Riviera. Now comes a newly released concert of Fitzgerald in Oakland, Calif.
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Born March 13, 1925, Haynes was a drummer who liked to prod his fellow players. Over the course of his career, he played with Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, Sarah Vaughan, Chick Corea and many others.
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Born Sept. 27, 1924, Powell helped set the style for jazz piano after WWII. While earlier pianists played busy bass patterns, he helped establish a more fragmented, punctuating role for the left hand.
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Bley, who died Oct. 17, led her own large and small touring bands from the 1970s until a few years ago — but jazz musicians had been playing her enigmatic compositions long before that.
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The tenor sax player came up in Chicago and toured in the '60s with Charles Mingus, Max Roach and Randy Weston. Jordan's forgotten album, Drink Plenty Water, mixes singers with a small ensemble.
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Threadgill's autobiography, written with Brent Hayes Edwards is called Easily Slip into Another World. His album, The Other One, is a three-movement composition written for a 12-piece ensemble.
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No '60s pop composer wrote more sophisticated songs than Bacharach, who died Feb. 8. Dozens of his best songs endure for all the right reasons; they're inventive, challenging and linger in your ear.
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Schulz, who died in 2000, spoke in 1990 about his iconic Peanuts comic strip. Plus, jazz critic Kevin Whitehead talks about pianist Vince Guaraldi, who created the music for A Charlie Brown Christmas.
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Roach's album was recently named to the National Recording Registry, a roster of works deemed culturally, historically or aesthetically significant; We Insist! scores in all three categories.