Eric Olson

Former Washington Post editor David Rowell begins his most recent book with a salient question: “Do we even want new music anymore?” For Rowell, a music journalist, the query...

After the half-decade AEG debacle, Bumbershoot is officially back. It’s not better than ever – a bit pricey; not enough beer selection; you can’t exactly top Miles Davis; etc. – but these two years under New Rising Sun have been a sterling return to form.

One expects brilliance from any musician associated with Miles’s bands. What they don’t expect is a chance to drive said artist back to their hotel after the gig.

Lists like this one are built on a rickety foundation of caveats and qualifications, the most important being that musical taste is a curious impulse. Unlike film, unlike novels, it’s almost impossible to diagnose our musical ideals.

Just as Jesus once left Chicago, the world’s greatest living guitarist left the Emerald City yesterday after an intimate eight-show residence at Jazz Alley. Classic rock heads and Rolling...

McBride named this quartet New Jawn, “jawn” being a Philly term used as a placeholder for something above or maybe below immediate naming. Curious about its grammatical use? The Internet Provides. “Pass me that jawn.” “This jawn is packed.” In Hawaii they have a similar term, “Dakine.” Perhaps we need a Seattle variation.

The Seattle Center finally feels more new than old, and Day In Day Out, the incipient musical festival now in its third year of operation, feels newer than most anything this side of the EMP, or whatever they’re calling Paul Allen’s dusty guitar collection these days.

Readers might not expect a Northwest novel from a book about a midcentury country singer, but The Farewell Tour is very much a story of Washington state, albeit hidden in a star-spangled package.

Cohen, 33, is making waves these days as a busybody among musical busybodies. Whether operating as a bandleader, as part of his Master’s Legacy Series – recording alongside legends like Jimmy Cobb and Ron Carter – or as a sideman for Veronica Swift and Herlin Riley, the New Jersey native continues to scale all manner of jazz ladders, taking third place in DownBeat’s most recent Pianist Poll (behind Herbie Hancock and Brad Mehldau, not bad company).

When Ornette Coleman released The Shape of Jazz to Come in 1959, the genre marched off into overblown atonality. Were a similarly titled record to drop today, it’d sound an awful lot like Keyon Harrold.