Album reviews

The top 5 D.C. jazz albums of 2024

This year, the DC Jazz Festival marked 20 years of service and the Mid-Atlantic Jazz Festival hit 15 — two indications, among many, of how robust the D.C. jazz scene remains as we approach the halfway mark of the 2020s. This list is another measure of that.  Dozens of quality recordings were released by DMV […]
0
The Month in Shows

5 D.C. jazz picks for December 2024

As I write this column on Thanksgiving Day, I just want to say: I am thankful. For all of you that read this column every month (or whenever you can), all of you that support CapitalBop’s work, and especially all of you whose artistic and personal contributions help make the D.C. jazz scene the remarkable […]
0
Features

Charlie Fishman: An appreciation

On Tuesday, Nov. 12, Charles Fishman – known far and wide by friends and intimates alike simply as “Charlie” – passed on to the next realm to join the ancestors at age 82, depriving humanity of yet another true jazz champion.  Not a big guy in the strictly physical sense, Charlie was a wiry-built man […]
0
Features

Simple, honest, beautiful: On Brandon Woody’s sonic journey

To feel love is to be vulnerable and not have it held against you. This is one way that Brandon Woody’s philosophy of sound comes across.  From the first note, you are not only touched, you are held. The music becomes a way to release the thing holding you back, in order to be bound […]
0
News

Christie Dashiell reacts to her first Grammy nomination: ‘This is for all of us’

After receiving her first-ever Grammy nomination last week, for her sophomore album Journey in Black (2023), beloved D.C.-based vocalist Christie Dashiell gave credit to the city that she has called home for the better part of two decades. “It feels amazing,” Dashiell told CapitalBop, referring to her nomination in the Best Jazz Vocal Album category. […]
0
Interviews

Clarinet conclave: Don Byron dishes to Todd Marcus about the ‘white-centric’ history of their instrument, the genius of Joe Henderson and touring post-pandemic

Clarinetist, saxophonist and composer Don Byron has been a trailblazer in music since his first albums came out in the early 1990s. His contributions extend a small-but-powerful legacy of artists — including Eric Dolphy, Bennie Maupin and David Murray — whose work as improvisers and composers has established a prominent role for the clarinet and bass […]
0
CapitalBop