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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Werner named his new album after his state of mind when he's improvising.Jazz critic Kevin Whitehead says Werner's piano sings with the voice of experience.
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McLorin Salvant's powerful voice takes center state on her new album, a duo with pianist Sullivan Fortner. Jazz critic Kevin Whitehead says the music on The Windowis riveting.
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A just-reissued album, from 1981, features diverse musicians playing songs that Nino Rotacomposed for Federico Fellini movies. Critic Kevin Whitehead calls it a charming album that's long overdue.
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On what would have been Blanton's 100 birthday, jazz critic Kevin Whitehead recounts the ways in which the bassist revolutionized his instrument during his brief time on the music scene.
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Decades after he changed modern music as member of Miles Davis' 1960s quintet, and then as co-founder of the band Weather Report, Shorter continues to break ground with a new triple album.
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The alto saxophonist's new record with his band Five Elements is a two-disc set, in which most pieces are played twice, in differing elastic versions.
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Early in his career, clarinetist Andy Biskin worked as an assistant to the folklorist Alan Lomax. Biskin's new album features new settings of songs drawn from Lomax's The Folk Songs of North America.
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Last year, Tufts University hosted a symposium on Art, Race and Politics, which included a panel discussion (and later a concert) with musicians Daniel Carter, Matthew Shipp and William Parker.
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A new album revives the lost tracks of a studio session Coltrane recorded with his quartet in 1963. Critic Kevin Whitehead says Both Directions At Once: The Lost Album is solid — but not revelatory.
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Royston is a trained composer who knows how to manipulate her materials all sorts of ways. Critic Kevin Whitehead says the music on Beautiful Liar is "sleek and sturdy" and "made to be played."