Siddhartha Mitter

Making a statement

Boston Globe, May 23, 2008
Jazz bassist and vocalist Esperanza Spalding is on the express track. At 23, she's not only a Berklee College of Music alumna, but already on the school's faculty, and she's gigging amid the jazz elite, from backing Joe Lovano or Pat Metheny to hitting the top festivals like Newport. Her new self-titled record marks another career jump, as she has left the European indie label of her 2006 disc, "Junjo," for Heads Up, with its well-regarded roster of established jazz, blues, and world artists. The new record came out this week, and Spalding plays a CD-release show at the Regattabar Thursday.

Bringing about a reunion of fusion pioneers

Boston Globe, May 18, 2008
A ritual of summer takes on a jazz flavoring this year, as perhaps the season's most anticipated reunion tour is the one featuring the classic lineup of Return to Forever, one of the most iconic jazz units of the '70s.

Sax man likes to go with the flow

Boston Globe, May 16, 2008
NEW YORK - When he was about 12 years old, Pete Robbins knew he wanted to learn a wind instrument so he could play in his school band. And he worried that his original choice, the clarinet, simply wasn't cool.

Haale's sound stretches from New York to Iran

Boston Globe, May 6, 2008
Call her Persian. Call her a New Yorker. Call her a rocker. Call her a poet. Even call her a mystic, if you must. But please, don't call Haale exotic.

A life in between worlds

Boston Globe,  May 2, 2008
NEW YORK - It's your basic immigrant success story, really: A young man grows up in a faraway country, feels the call of a challenging vocation, sets his eyes upon a dream. He works with relentless purpose and finds his way to America where, under the tutelage of masters in his field, he becomes, at just 35, a master in his own right.

Remembering a world-music giant

Boston Globe, April 4, 2008
Last October, Andy Palacio, a brilliant musician and activist from Belize, capped a landmark year by standing on a stage in Seville, Spain, to accept world music's highest tribute: the WOMEX Award.

Victor Wooten trades his funky soul for a spiritual one

Boston Globe, March 28, 2008
Mystical visitations are much on the mind these days of Victor Wooten. In addition to a new album, "Palmystery," out next week, the Nashville-based contemporary bass guitar hero is also releasing a book, a work of fiction titled "The Music Lesson," in which a young player learns wisdom well beyond musical technique alone from a chance encounter with a spiritually advanced stranger.

Surviving a rough patch

Boston Globe, March 21, 2008
Last year was a time of transition for the Drive-By Truckers, the Athens, Ga., band with the dual gift for high-octane rocking and magisterial front-porch storytelling. Personnel flux and a sense of fatigue led the group to pare down its sound, perform acoustic gigs, and take time out to serve as backing band on a soul-music project.

Prezens is all over the map -- and that's the point

Boston Globe, March 14, 2008
One of the most interesting recent albums to beam back from the frontier where jazz, rock, electronica, and free improvisation intersect was David Torn's "Prezens." It's a digitally enhanced quartet led by a guitarist-producer whose career has taken on the most abstract projects as well as some of the most commercial, as a composer of Hollywood soundtracks or a session musician on major pop and R&B releases.

A banjo, a piano, and two willing masters

Boston Globe, February 29, 2008
In four decades exploring seemingly every nook and cranny of straight-ahead jazz, Latin jazz, and fusion, the pianist Chick Corea has exemplified versatility and spirit of adventure to as great an extent as any musician today. But even omnivorous curiosity has limits. So when asked how much interest he had ever taken, until recently, in working with a banjo as accompanying instrument, Corea's reply is frank and succinct: "Zero."