Grateful for my beloved wife, son, daughter-in-law, grandchildren and siblings. Also a lover of theology, music, history, philosophy, classic novels, science fiction, fantasy and Looney Tunes.
Narration by David Tennant (Doctor Who, Royal Shakespeare Company, etc.):
Swirl in a lark’s eye Sparks alive are swooping slow The Village is a tear in a quail-packed quilt Fluffed and flattened farm gardens Diced by dark-hedged crosswords Hardened in the moon’s stare Standing stone, laying stone Sleep like the people Who have calcified in the shade of the steeple Market Day and a creaking dray Wheel through the sky Deliver the yawning sun from the bed of the dale Splash awake their pale plate-faces The Village is alive
The Tedeschi Trucks Band with Alabama Shakes, Acrisure Amphitheater, Grand Rapids, Michigan, August 25, 2026.
Taking our places on the lawn of our city’s new outdoor concert shed, my wife and I were hyped up by the crowd that had gathered. Used to a maximum capacity of 2,000 at Grand Rapids’ other outdoor venue, it was pretty exhilarating to see at least twice as many folks gathered on the grass around us – and even more than that in the covered seats up front! About 10,000 folks, both locals and fans who’d obviously made a pilgrimage from elsewhere, all in place for an evening of rootsy music.
I wasn’t sure what openers Alabama Shakes had in store; neither of their albums had impressed me, and they’ve only been back together for a couple of years following a lengthly hiatus, touring in anticipation of their comeback album I Must Be Dreaming. What we got, though, was a generous helping of langorous psychedelic soul that easily exceeded my expectations.
Looking and sounding for all the world like Sister Rosetta Tharpe returned, Brittany Howard commanded the stage from the start, her gospel-soaked vocals a thing of wonder, her stinging rhythm and searing licks on a foam-green Gibson SG going straight to the gut. Long-time bandmates Heath Fogg on guitar and Zac Cockrell on bass hail from the “less is more” school of down-home Southern music; set off by laid-back stage drummer Noah Bond (playing so far behind the beat he seemed to be in a different time zone), even with double keyboards and a backing vocal trio there was plenty of space for Howard to strut her stuff. And while Alabama Shakes’ songs can sound undercomposed and overfussed-with on record, they clicked live; focusing on their more experimental second album Sound and Color, the band mixed in enough new material (and the upbeat hits from their shorter, snappier debut Boys and Girls) to keep the audience spellbound and wanting more. Ultimately they stretched out for more than an hour, bringing a well-deserved co-headline set to a savory, simmering boil by the end.
Then, as the sun went down and the air took on a chill, the Tedeschi Trucks Band brought some welcome fire, complete with an encouragement on the video screens to stand up and dance! Susan Tedeschi’s gorgeous, gritty singing (with great vocal interjections from keys man Gabe Dixon) and Derek Trucks’ imaginative, heartfelt slide work set the pace across the up-tempo Motown jump of “Playing with My Emotions”, the straightforward drive of “Made Up Mind” and the Quiet Storm R&B of “I Got You” (from fabulous new album Future Soul) and “Midnight in Harlem”, as Tyler Greenwell and Isaac Eady laid down a flowing, bubbling bed of double drum work.
But it was on their thrillingly eclectic selection of covers that the 12-piece ensemble showed themselves a true band of equals. Tedeschi bragged and purred with both voice and guitar on Muddy Waters’ “Got My Mojo Working”; second vocalist Mike Mattison worried and wailed through Chuck Willis’ “I Feel So Bad”; after Trucks had brought Eric Clapton’s “Keep On Growing” down to a hush, trombonist Elizabeth Lea brought it all the way back up! Vocalist Mark Rivers, trumpeter Emmanuel Echern and sax man Kebbi Williams had their moments to shine too.
And the high point was yet to come: first TTB combined with Alabama Shakes’ backing singers for Sly Stone’s “You Can Make It If You Try”; then Brittany Howard tore it up duetting with Tedeschi on Stone’s transcendent “Everyday People”. That got the entire crowd on their feet, staying up as the band played right through to the city curfew, taking the set out with The Allman Brothers’ chugging “Stand Back”, original “I Want More” and a furious coda of Santana’s “Soul Sacrifice.”
“I’m building a kingdom in my soul/Where the fires first burned let flowers grow” were the first words from Brittany Howard’s mouth Tuesday night. “Hope your future’s got soul in it” is the chorus from that fine new Tedeschi Trucks Band album’s title track. Alabama Shakes and TTB have gone their separate ways for now; but if you want to build that kingdom of future soul inside you, seeing one or both of these bands would be a great way to start.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a surefire box office winner. It’s long been considered one of Shakespeare’s most approachable plays, due to its appealing characters, humorous plot complications, and language that rings the changes from rustic simplicity through witty aristocratic banter to lyrical flights of supernatural fancy. As such, it’s typically considered actor-proof; say your lines, hit your marks and you’ve done your job.
Director-proof, however, can be another story; from Max Reinhardt’s 1930s outdoor spectacular at the Hollywood Bowl through Peter Hall’s 1960s “white box” chamber version with the Royal Shakespeare Company, to recent decades’ fad for gender-bending within the core romances, Shakespeare is frequently swallowed up in directors’ need to Get Our Attention And Make A Statement. The first time my wife and I saw the play at Stratford in 2004, Leon Rubin’s production conceits (“The enchanted wood’s like a — a rain forest! So we’ll set the whole thing in South America! Oh, and the fairies are acrobats too!”) proved an active turn-off; the characters and humor were all but smothered by the bells and whistles of distracting costumes, scenery and spectacle.
In his program note, director Graham Abbey threatens full-on Regietheater, making opaque noises about reveling in disorder and the necessity of rebellion. But fortunately, Abbey’s basic trust in Shakespeare. along with his solid dramatic instincts, carry the day. This is by and large A Midsummer Night’s Dream as veteran admirers know it and those encountering it for the first time should.
Abbey’s biggest tweak is setting the action in late Victorian England, and that works – because arguably, Shakespeare’s original human characters are pretty doggone universal across cultures, no matter their Athenian names. So Evan Buliung’s Theseus is appropriately pompous yet engaging, whether wooing Ijeoma Emesowum’s reluctant but not adamant Hippolyta or throwing up his hands at the young lovers’ relationship hassles. Vivien Endicott-Douglas is a wonderfully straight-up Hermia, gushingly in love; Jessica B. Hill grabs the majority of the laughs as a dryly funny yet vulnerable Helena; Jordin Hall and Thomas Duplessie start out bland and interchangeable as Lysander and Demetrius, but put clever props (a ukelele and a deerstalker hat, respectively) to good use opening up their characters. The rustic mechanicals – morphed to traveling circus players in this version – are, as usual, winningly earnest and hopelessly out of their depth from top (Sarah Dodd’s flustered dramaturge Rita Quince) to Bottom (Nick Spencer-Davis in an appropriately bravura comic turn).
And of course, when all and sundry wander into the enchanted wood of Shakespeare’s fairies Oberon (Andre Sills, seasoning his usual power and magnetism with sly humor), Titania (a spellbinding Sara Topham, whose every line and gesture compel attention) and Puck (Mike Nadajewski, energetically committed to maximum disruption) — mayhem breaks loose, with the audience quite literally in the midst of it. As fairies troop down the theatre aisles to the thrust stage of the Tom Patterson Theatre (pulsating with subtly immersive digital projections and surround-sound effects) and Nadajewski persistently breaks the fourth wall, playing to the crowd with sneaky pranks and Phil Collins-style party tricks, we wind up every bit as loopy as the lovers, as bemused as Bottom and company. And Abbey’s second-biggest tweak – unwinding Oberon’s curse on Titania through mutual forgiveness instead of further deception – puts us in the same boat as everyone else exiting the wood; not quite certain of our footing, but ready for a breather via The Most Lamentable Comedy and Most Cruel Death of Pyramusand Thisbe (enacted by the mechanicals with eager flair, organic pratfalls and a hilarious pastiche soundtrack of classical/Romantic chestnuts, courtesy of pianist Michael Man’s Robin Starveling).
To sum up: most (though not all) directors’ theater versions of A Midsummer Night’s Dream stutter and stumble trying to make their point. Though Abbey’s take on the play is portentous on the surface, the loose, fantastical staging and slapstick comedy of this production issue directly from Shakespeare’s characters and situations, given fire and vibrancy by a first-rate cast where the young players step up to the level of their veteran Festival colleagues. The few tiny hiccups here are vastly outweighed by a real devotion to the absurdity and the grace baked in by the poet himself. From Row G of the theatre, this was an utterly enjoyable vision of the Dream, one that brings to life Theseus’ Act 5 summation of the night:
The lunatic, the lover, and the poet Are of imagination all compact. One sees more devils than vast hell can hold: That is the madman. The lover, all as frantic, Sees Helen’s beauty in a brow of Egypt. The poet’s eye, in a fine frenzy rolling, Doth glance from heaven to Earth, from Earth to heaven, And as imagination bodies forth The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing A local habitation and a name.
Think about it. Almost all unpleasant things happen on Sundays. We wait all week for that special day, to relax, to live those twenty-four hours blissfully and without commitments. But when it comes, it’s never what we hoped for, we feel so lost doing nothing that we go looking for worries and troubles.
The beginning of Eduardo de Philippo’s Saturday, Sunday, Monday seems to set up an extended Italian family as little more than bickering figures of fun. Matriarch Rosa Priore (Rose Napoli) is already cooking Sunday dinner on the day before, sparing no one in her attention to her famous ragu; her husband, clothing shop owner Peppino (Graham Abbey) looks on frustrated and bemused as his retired father-in-law Antonio (Rod Beattie) eggs on son Rocco (Emilio Vieira) to open his own hat shop and his independent sister Meme (Seana McKenna) encourages daughter Giulianella (Katarina Fiallos) to carve out a life for herself, against the wishes of her fiance Federico (Maher Sinno). Then there are Peppino’s melodramatic brother Raffaele (Geraint Wyn Davies), intent on his weekend foray into commedia dell’arte; Meme’s sickly son and Raffaele’s biggest fan Attilio (Josue Laboucane); and neighbors the Ianniellos – Luigi (Gordon S. Miller) praising Rosa to the skies and showering her with gifts, his wife Elena (Michelle Giroux) patiently bearing with Luigi’s copious enthusiasm. With all these personalities passing through Rosa’s kitchen, colliding as they make contact, sparks fly non-stop throughout Act One – to the point that, when my wife and I compared notes at the first intermission, we thought that, entertaining though the tangled web of tussling might be, more passive-aggressive behavior might be in order!
But like Shakespeare in his “problem plays” – comedies like Measure for Measure and All’s Well that Ends Well that have happy endings, but whose characters and plots may be as disturbing as they are funny – de Filippo is after something deeper than cheap laughs. It’s not just that Peppino feels his authority over his grown children ebbing; distance and estrangement from Rosa combined with jealous imaginings about her and Luigi have taken hold. When his farcical futility early in Act Two gives way to an accusatory outburst at the dinner table, it’s a genuine shock that stops the assembled family in their tracks and utterly derails audience expectations. The crisis that follows casts a shadow over every character – but also reveals the depths of loyalty and sympathy that have bound them all together, whatever their conflicts. Still, on Act Three’s Monday morning, no matter how much warm-hearted support others might give, it’s up to a thoroughly devastated Rosa and a heartbreakingly repentant Peppino to dig deep for the roots of their mutual misunderstanding. Beyond making amends, they face the ordeal of recovering what brought and kept them together, no matter the pain such an uphill climb entails.
Under Antoni Cimolino’s committed, passionate direction, the cast is more than up to the task of bringing diFilippo’s bustling yet intimate morality play to life. Coming off the similar male lead Leontes in last year’s Stratford production of The Winter’s Tale, Abbey thoroughly inhabits and embodies Peppino’s inner turbulence; while Napoli may be a Stratford rookie, her solid background in Canadian theater and television has given her the technical chops and emotional muscle to easily go toe to toe with him and the rest of the cast. The cross-generational character pairings of Beattie & Vieira, McKenna & Fiallos and Davies & Laboucane, as well as the couples Fiallo & Sinno, Miller & Giroux and Jakob Ehman & Celia Aloma (as oldest son Roberto and his wife Maria Carolina) all do stellar supporting work; beyond the lively dialogue (from a translation developed with the cast in the process of rehearsal), you can see richly grounded relationships playing out in facial expressions, body language, pauses to listen. Even the comic characters that pass through the Priore house on various errands – Jenna-Lee Hyde’s longsuffering maid Virginia, Liam Tobin as her tortured brother Michele, David Collins’ exasperated tailor Catiello, Michael Wamara’s doctor Cefercola – bring an open-heartedness to their roles; they know and value this family, and whatever their personal preoccupations or the surprises they encounter in the course of the weekend, they desire the best for them.
A decade beyond his authorship of Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Eduardo di Filippo offered this interpretive key:
At the end of the comedy there is no one who does not understand that only love can hold two beings together.
Kudos are unquestionably due to Antoni Cimilino for driving home diFilippo’s unique blend of effervescent humor, penetrating psychological insight and hope for the human condition in this, his final production as Artistic Director of the Stratford Festival, as well as to a superb cast of Festival veterans and newcomers for their collaboration in bringing diFilippo’s vision to life onstage.
[For maximum effect, read the next paragraph aloud with a New York accent:]
So this gentleman Damon Runyon, a progeny of Kansas grown to manhood in Colorado, comes to the big city of Manhattan to pursue his vocation as a journalist in the early 1900s. His greatest success, though, turns out to be his fictional “fables of Broadway”, where a motley cast of “guys” pursue their vocations: penny ante gambling; recounting their tall tales in verbose orotund sentences couched in the historical present and spiced with a smattering of Yiddish; staying one step ahead of the law, the “big boys” of their chosen profession, and the “dolls” that seem to lurk around every corner to knock them off their desired courses.These fables prove to be so popular that, in 1950, theybecome a Broadway musical . . .
And what a musical it is! Though Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma pioneered the full integration of tunes with story on Broadway, Guys and Dolls elevated the genre to the sparkling heights of Strauss’ Die Fledermaus or Mozart’s The Magic Flute, while hitting the bullseye of pop culture at the Great American Songbook’s height. Production roadblocks meant that Frank Loesser’s jazzy songs came first, laying out the characters and plot twists of Runyon’s “The Idyll of Miss Sarah Brown” all by themselves; his lyrics teem with wit and warmth, his music stuffs soaring melodic earworms into compellingly clever forms. All book writer Abe Burrows had to do was sharpen the setting and exposition (and set up as many opportunities for ensemble dance numbers as possible) and voila! – an affectionate, rough-edged romp that sets petty crooks, burlesque dancers and revivalist missionaries at odds, then lets romance complicate the whole meshuggah situation.
Over the decades, this kind of big musical has become catnip for the Stratford Festival, sitting comfortably alongside Shakespeare, Oscar Wilde, Beckett, Arthur Miller and world premieres in the current season’s repertory. And mounted on the Festival Theatre’s unique thrust stage for the fourth time, Guys and Dolls plays every bit as spectacularly as when my wife and I saw it on our first trip here back in 2004. Veteran Donna Feore’s direction is ceaselessly vivid and lively, flowing into organic, breathtaking choreography from the “Runyonland” overture and the opening vocal canon “Fugue for Tinhorns” onward, backed by a live 20-piece orchestra. Onstage Manhattan street life feels as bustling and busy as when you’re there in person; the characters populating Nathan Detroit’s “oldest established floating crap game in New York”, Sister Sarah Brown’s Save-A-Soul Mission and Miss Adelaide’s Hot Box all bubble over with anticipation and zest for whatever may come their way. Even wandering roustabout Sky Masterson brings his own atmosphere with him: smitten by Sarah, crashing her mission and (based on a bet with Nathan) sweeping her away to Havana, where neither can find the words to express their feelings without breaking into song . . .
Whatever the overall impression, it’s the principal actors who make or break a show like this, and every one of them delivers here. Best known for screwball comedy, Dan Chameroy delivers a bluff, charismatic male lead in Sky, whether letting down his guard on “My Time of Day” or stepping up for the gamble of his life on “Luck Be A Lady”. Olivia Sinclair-Brisbane proves a top-notch ingenue, a bit strident in her high vocal range, but wonderfully steely on “I’ll Know” and comedically tipsy on “If I Were A Bell” (one of Miles Davis’ standby tunes). When sparks fly between the two on “I’ve Never Been in Love Before”, the effect is genuine and magical. Then there’s Mark Uhre’s Nathan and Jessica Rider Shaw’s Adelaide as a delightfully neurotic second couple, longtime lovers each afraid in their own way of commitment (“Adelaide’s Lament” and the duet “Sue Me” are both smartly, squirmingly hilarious). Meanwhile, sideline observers like Steve Patterson as mission colleague Arvide Abernathy (who nails the fatherly “More I Cannot Wish You”) and Steve Ross as Nathan’s comic colleague Nicely-Nicely Johnson (who steals the show on the title song and the uproarious “Sit Down, You’re Rocking the Boat”) look on in bemusement, knowing from experience how these crazy kids’ tangles will work themselves out.
It’s a tribute to this cast’s talent and commitment that most of them – including Uhre, Chameroy and Sinclair-Brisbane in principal roles – are also in Feore’s remount of the nutty Shakespeare send-up Something Rotten (sometimes playing both productions on the same day). But the Stratford Festival is consistently good at theatrical miracles like this. And in its warmly humanist view of life out of the mainstream, Guys and Dolls itself is kind of miraculous: underneath its postwar, American-as-apple- pie optimism, this is a schmaltzy, mischievously naughty yet emotionally true take on how the love of your life can ambush you on any corner as you wait for something to happen – whether you’re singing your song, dancing your dance, pounding your big bass drum or just hanging out.
Most artists wouldn’t start their live set with an obscure song from an now-obscure 20-year-old album (arguably a major label’s desperate attempt to justify their investment by breaking said artist back into the mainstream, via celebrity duets with Sting and Eric Clapton). Most artists definitely wouldn’t follow that up with another obscure song from his follow-up collaboration with a generational bluegrass talent.
But then, this is Bruce Hornsby we’re talking about. Seated at the grand piano stage left, facing his Noisemakers – J.T. Thomas on keyboards, Gibb Droll on guitar, J.V. Collier on bass, John Mailander on mandolin and fiddle, and Chad Wright on drums – grouped in a half circle, Hornsby launched into an extended, exploratory take on Halcyon Days’ “Circus on the Moon“, followed by “Gulf of Mexico Fishing Blues” from his duet album with Ricky Skaggs.
While a familiar track from Hornsby’s Top 40 years, “Look Out Any Window“, was up next, only the chords and the lyrics recalled the original recording. Instead of facing the audience, intent on making maximum impact, Hornsby and the Noisemakers seemed to invite us into a space where, though grateful for our company, their focus would be on the music. And the near-capacity crowd went there, leaning in to listen as Hornsby worried at the melody and the band took the tune’s structure new places, scaling heights of delicate interplay and spanning depths of ensemble groove.
The next stretch of songs, from the new album Indigo Park, confirmed that impression; “Ecstatic”, “Memory Palace”, and the title track continually blazed unexpected trails, individual Noisemakers stepping forward and pulling back, Hornsby choreographing with eye contact and hand gestures. And the hits were forthcoming – but only on Hornsby‘s terms. A wildly atonal piano prelude spanning the length and breadth of the keyboard gave away to a decorous, romantic waltz, eventually teasing Hornsby’s breakthrough song “The Way It Is”. At which point he turned to the audience and said, “You want the pretty version or the jammin’ version?“ The whoop of recognition and the crowd’s spontaneous rise to its feet decided the question in favor of a jam; and with Hornsby again scatting around the melody and extending the jazz piano breaks, the result bore only faint resemblance to that long-ago hit single.
By that point, Hornsby was in his comfort zone and ready to take multiple chances. The minor hit “Across the River”, his first recorded collaboration with the Grateful Dead’s Jerry Garcia, drew a warm ovation from the crowd. They also ooh’d and ah’d when the band unplugged and came forward, Hornsby picked up a dulcimer, and Wright donned a washboard vest for two more deep tracks, followed by an appealing, muted take on “Mandolin Rain”.
Appropriately, the high point of the night was the climax of the set: “Rainbow’s Cadillac“, jazzed up and stretched out; “The Show Goes On”, where a passionate piano/vocal solo morphed into a full on, full-band power ballad; and a tribute to Hornsby‘s Grand Rapids debut 40 years ago, Bruce strapping on his accordion to rock out the first track from his debut album, “On the Western Skyline “.
Throughout the night, Hornsby and his Noisemakers welcomed you into their world – but very much on their terms. If the instrumental jamming went on a bit too long, you could focus on how each person on stage was listening hard, adding their bit or laying out as required. Or you could focus on how Hornsby – whose voice now lacks the power of his youthful salad days, but brings to bear all kinds of canny tricks as he sings – constantly played with the tunes, twisting and turning them, familiar words perceived from fresh melodic angles. And whether any given moment moved toward stasis, languor or excitement, you could tell that, flashing and flickering, Music was there on this serene summer evening, leaning over, taking Hornsby, the Noisemakers, and all of us into its confidence.
Visibly excited to kick off his latest US tour leg in Grand Rapids (especially after persistent rain dogged his 2025 show in the same location), Jason Isbell laid out his cards right from the downbeat of anthemic rocker “Hope the High Road”:
I heard enough of the white man’s blues I’ve sang enough about myself So if you’re looking for some bad news You can find it somewhere else
Last year was a son of a bitch For nearly everyone we know But I ain’t fighting with you down in a ditch I’ll meet you up here on the road
I know you’re tired And you ain’t sleeping well Uninspired And likely mad as hell But wherever you are I hope the high road leads you home again To a world you want to live in
It’s Isbell’s subject matter in a nutshell: Everyman up against the wall, battling his demons and straining to make contact. Whether caught up in the daily struggle for sobriety (“It Gets Easier”), a generation-spanning family feud (the Drive-By Truckers classic “Decoration Day”), the stifling conformity of big city (“Last of My Kind”) and Southern home town (“Crimson and Clay”), or the hell of war (“Dress Blues”), his protagonists constantly stare down inevitable fate. And typically, fate wins: the singer of “Gravelweed” laments the wounds inflicted on a former partner (though not without a tremulous assertion of his own growth); the folky ballad “Live Oak” shifts imperceptibly from haunting sentiment to quiet, understated horror; the elegy of “Elephant” proves unsparing in both its depiction of cancer and its devastating punchline (“There’s one thing that’s real clear to me/No one dies with dignity/We just try to ignore the elephant somehow.”) In his own voice or inhabiting a character, Isbell knows that, in the end, we all run out of road in this world.
So what hope is there, given Isbell’s grim, wry vision of God as distant at best (“Last of My Kind”), actively uncaring at worst (the exhilarating, chilling rocker “24 Frames”)? His consolations turn out to be the simple, small attractions that move, leverage and sustain connection; familial bonds unpacked in fatherly advice (his Truckers breakthrough song “Outfit”); beauty recalled in the depths of barrenness (“Alabama Pines”); pride taken in meaningless, backbreaking work (“Something More Than Free”); art and music’s power to conjure up space, freedom, little victories (“Ride to Robert’s”). And, evanescent as it can be, a love as strong as death, fiercely yet tenderly rendered in the tough country ballads “Cover Me Up” and “If We Were Vampires”.
In sum, Jason Isbell is one genuinely mighty songwriter. And while he did toss out a semi-serious apology for so many “sad-ass songs”, he knows it and revels in it. Throughout the night, he sang with conviction and gusto, his finely detailed vocals shading the dark corners or lighting up fleeting moments of triumph. And while Isbell’s songs are more than good enough to stand on their own, his 400 Unit puts bone, muscle and skin on the heart and soul at their core; like Tom Petty’s Heartbreakers, they serve the music with grit and grace. Isbell considers his guitar playing “a hobby”, but he’s perfectly fine on both rhythm and lead – fluent, stylish, down-home or bluesy as the tune requires. Guitarist Sadler Vaden and keyboardist Derrick DeBorja proved both sympathetic duet partners with Isbell and down-and-dirty ensemble players; bassist Anna Butterss (the heartbeat of jazz guitarist Jeff Parker’s ETA IVTet – talk about versatility!) and drummer Chad Gamble rocked hard and grooved with flair; utility player Will Johnson amped up the power chords, held down the acoustic strumming, or joined Gamble to toughen the backbeat as the songs required.
So as the sun went down, Isbell and the 400s rolled into a pile-driving set close and encore. With Gamble slowing the beat ever so slightly and the now-vivid lighting hitting dramatic heights, “King of Oklahoma”, “Cover Me Up” and “If We Were Vampires” got the crowd on their feet; the Truckers’ melancholy, transcendent ode to The Band “Danko/Manuel” (“Can you hear that singing sounds like gold/Maybe I can only hear it in my head/Fifteen years ago they owned that road/Now it’s rolling over us instead/Richard Manuel is dead”) and fiery getaway rocker “This Ain’t It” (culminating in a Isbell/Vaden duet that reached peak Allman Brothers territory) left them hungry for more.
Jason Isbell is the real thing, one of the leading voices in today’s American music, fearlessly digging deep into the human condition, the pull of fate and the push of attraction. The 400 Unit fit his songs like a glove; as a collective, they make a powerful, compelling noise that straddles rock and country, yielding maximum emotional impact. On record, this music is impressive; live, this band is even more so, well worth hearing and seeing when they head in your direction.
Jason Isbell tours, with and without The 400 Unit, through November 2026; show dates are here. Setlist at Meijer Gardens Amphitheater, July 23, 2026:
It’s a glorious Memorial Day afternoon – and, on this American holiday weekend, I’m looking back on five months of hearing and reflecting on America’s greatest musical invention. As always, there are plenty of worthwhile jazz albums (whether new or archival) easily in your reach; these are notable selections from what’s come to my attention so far this year. I’ve included listening links within album titles where available, along with a purchase link after my review where necessary.
The album I’ve turned to the most (despite being released only this past month) is the Jeff Parker ETA IVTet’s Happy Today. Recorded live at a congenial Los Angeles haunt, guitarist Parker, saxophonist Jeff Johnson, bassist Anna Butterss and drummer Jay Bellerose conjure two generous portions of sheer music from silence. Guitar riffs circle and morph; sax lines are looped into shimmering chords and textures; hovering above capacious, confident rhythm work, all four players constantly listening and reacting, moving together through gradual builds and sudden tempo shifts. Whether weaving around each other’s contributions in a supple dance (“Like Swimming”) or ascending a rainbow of tone colors to a light, sweet shuffle (the title track), there’s no hurry, no contention – just a collaborative climb to lofty, inspired heights. It’s a measure of how rich this album is that every time I listen, I want to hear it again!
Parker, Johnson and Buttress also lay down understated foundations on Flea’s solo album Honora. The Red Hot Chili Peppers’ bassist returns to his heritage as a jazz trumpeter here, and while he’s boned up in recent years, he knows he’s running with thoroughbred players. Flea’s vocal features on the album’s noisier bookends “A Plea” and “Free as I Want to Be” push straight to hot emotional extremes, but his trumpet work is cool and controlled (reflecting the influence of Chet Baker); his original compositions combine understated tension with winning introspection; and his choices of cover tunes (Funkadelic to Glen Campbell to Franks Ocean & Sinatra) and guest vocalists (Thom Yorke backed by a horn section! Nick Cave singing “Wichita Lineman”!) are uniformly surprising and superb. Not what you might have expected, and all the better for it.
Four years ago, I thought Immanuel Wilkins might be part of jazz saxophone’s future; after hearing his quartet’s breathtaking Live at the Village Vanguard, Vol. 1, I’m convinced he’s now the present, in every sense of the term. Taking one of NYC’s most famous clubs by storm, Wilkins and his quartet (endlessly inventive pianist Micah Thomas, rock-solid bassist Ryoma Takenaga, masterful drummer Kweku Sumbury) are all in their 20s and 30s, but they’ve already lit out beyond previously explored territory to map their own exuberant course; through the modernistic postbop of “Warriors”, the Bachian interplay of “Composition XII”, the deep-rooted, ecstatic gospel of Alice Coltrane’s “Charnam” and the two-part “Eternal” (a time-bending workout that collapses into hypnotic sub-toned minimalism), there’s elegance and earthiness, mind and heart in constant dialogue. The applause after each track is unforced, the audience reacting to the Quartet’s potential unfolding into assured maturity before their ears. (Vol. 2 & Vol. 3 are equally fine, but only available via downloads or streaming. Buy Vol. 1 at Blue Note Records, — or lobby ’em for a complete box set!)
In case you hadn’t heard, Miles Davis’ centennial is this year – this week in fact. There are plenty of reissues already out and still to come, with tributes aplenty following in their wake. The best of the latter I’ve heard so far is Gregory Hutchinson’s Kind of Now: The Pulse of Miles Davis. Drummer Hutchinson’s style as a Young Lion has blossomed into a strong yet tempered sense of groove, thoroughly assimilating the work of the amazing drummers who backed up Davis; here, he leads an all-star group on a wild ride from early bebop (“Ah-Leu-Cha”) through cool school (“Fran Dance”, “Seven Steps to Heaven”) and a quartet of enigmatic Wayne Shorter tunes (including “Orbits” and “Water Babies”) to the pioneering days of jazz-rock fusion (“Bitches’ Brew” and “Circle in the Round”). Ambrose Akinmusere’s thick, liquid trumpet, Ron Blake’s consummately attentive sax work, and Gerald Clayton’s versatile, tasty piano delight throughout; it’s impossible to know what they’ll do at any given moment, but always satisfying in the aftermath. Around and through it all, there’s Hutchinson’s drive, color and sense of space. This is a thoughtful take on the breadth of Miles’ achievement that’s consistently focused and gracious, but marvelously abstract and unpredictable as well. (Buy the CD from Amazon.)
And as always, Record Store Day has brought a clutch of archival releases courtesy of jazz detective Zev Feldman. On Feldman’s 15th production of Bill Evans, At the BBC, the music is exquisite as always, despite severe sonic limitations inherent in the original 1960s television broadcast. Evans and his current trio with Chuck Israels and Larry Bunker shift moods on a dime, using dynamics as a key component in their mutual ebb and flow. Even when they take an uptempo tune like “Nardis” or turn “Waltz for Debby” into a 4/4 swinger, the rapt contemplation at the core of ballads like “My Foolish Heart” and “Who Can I Turn To?” are still winningly present. (Buy the CD from Amazon.)
Pursuing an idiom 180 degrees away from Evans, Cecil Taylor demanded the same level of attentive listening via radically different means – a sidelong take on the jazz piano tradition that reveled in fractured time and tonality, extended compositional statements and improvisations, a nigh-incessant, athletic tsunami of notes too fast to separate. On Fragments, recorded live at a French festival in 1969, Taylor prowls the keyboard like a roaring lion, endlessly pouring out riffs, chords, clusters; saxophonists Jimmy Lyons and Sam Rivers dialogue with and echo Taylor and each other, overblowing and piling up hyperspeed motifs at a frenetic pace; drummer Andrew Cyrille miraculously cooks up a flow in the absence of any downbeat – turning, shifting, reacting, leaping ahead. The two takes of Taylor’s “Fragments of a Dedication to Duke Ellington” are 50 and 90 minutes long, and you’ll feel like you’ve run a marathon after you’ve listened. This isn’t for the faint of heart or the squeamish, but trust me: Taylor’s pioneering free jazz will open up your ears and brain even as they wear them down and possibly out. (Buy the CD from Amazon.)
Hitting the St. Cecilia Music Center stage 20 years on from his last visit (and 40 years on from when I first heard him live with his brother Wynton, then with Sting), sax legend Branford Marsalis seemed relieved to have safely made it to Grand Rapids, just one night after two shows further north in snowbound Traverse City. (“Turned right at Cadillac and — whoa!! Where’s Santa?!?”)
But any fear that Marsalis’ tight quartet had been shaken by their brush with a spring blizzard soon vanished; loose and comfortable as their leader teased drummer Justin Faulkner about being the “birthday boy”, they were also focused and ready to play. With a flourish, pianist Joey Calderazzo launched into his postbop workout “The Mighty Sword” — and instantly, the band was in the moment, bringing the sold-out audience with them. Off the knotty head statement, Calderazzo built a two-handed solo to a simmering climax (both his legs were moving, too) that Branford took higher with volcanic soprano licks; meanwhile bassist Eric Revis pushed the pulse onward as Faulkner rolled and tumbled around and across his kit. On the edge of fully free expression, yet always locked into the underlying groove and listening hard to each other, the Quartet’s interplay was riveting and undeniable.
Keith Jarrett’s “‘Long As You Know You’re Living Yours” was up next. A funky highlight of Jarrett’s 1974 album Belonging(which the Quartet covered in full last year for Blue Note), it brought out a rambunctious streak in Branford, progressing from rhythmic subtones to frenetic sheets of sound; Calderazzo answered with deft, deeply swinging gospel. Which then dramatically transitioned into the rich lyricism of his “Conversation in the Ruins”, as both he and Marsalis took wing above Revis and Faulkner’s subdued, flickering rhythms.
Then, the history lesson. With Branford namechecking songwriter Fred Fisher (born Alfred Breitenbach in Germany before he emigrated to the USA), the Quartet timeslipped back to the primal years of jazz with “There Ain’t No Sweet Man That’s Worth the Salt of My Tears” (made famous by bandleader Paul Whiteman with Bix Beiderbeicke on cornet and Bing Crosby singing). Everyone soloed to powerful effect — Marsalis crooning on soprano, Revis gracefully, purposefully walking the bass, Faulkner delighting with a dynamic feast of accents and colors. It was only later that I realized: as bland, as polite – even as patronizing – as this music seems in retrospect, 100 years ago, it was on the cutting edge of American pop culture. Why not take it out for a spin today and see what happens?
“Why not?” turned out to be the throughline of everything the Marsalis Quartet did onstage, always leavened with affection for and attention to the music’s potential and each other. As the night went on, the crowd tuned into it, too: how Jarrett’s melancholic “Blossom” was elevated by Rives’ rhapsodic feature and Calderazzo and Branford’s insistent quotes from “Happy Birthday to You” (said one-upmanship bringing hysterical guffaws from Faulkner); how, nudged by the group’s thoughtful probing, Jimmy McHugh’s “On the Sunny Side of the Street” morphed from a hesitation shuffle through stop time to flat-out rock and back again.
And then, coming to an impasse onstage, Marsalis and Calderazzo asked the audience for multiple shows of hands : “Monk or Ellington?” (Branford after that vote: “Ellington wins. Ellington always wins.”) “Up or down?” (Up.) Which yielded a loping, speedy “It Don’t Mean A Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing)” as the last tune — and, announced as for the benefit of the “young musicians” from local high schools in the audience, a downtempo take on the same tune as the encore! Both ways, Branford smoked, Calderazzo swung, Rives flowed — but each drew on varying parts of their vocabulary, to vastly different effect. Though working in the same vein, Faulkner well and truly went to town throughout; his creatively minimalist solo choruses for the encore (first brushes on snare with quarter-note kicks, then entirely on floor tom, ranging from warm caresses to rim cracks to meaty thuds) proved an enticing riot of colors and syncopations. The standing ovations that followed each version were both earned and inevitable.
This lineup of the Branford Marsalis Quartet has worked together for more than a decade. As friend and fellow blogger Cedric Hendrix has observed, that’s rare in jazz circles; the consistent result, whether on record or live, is spectacular internal chemistry – which in turn provides extraordinary opportunities for the music to truly breathe, scaling ever-increasing heights of freshness, invention and resonance. To witness all that, generated by four masters at play, bringing a century’s worth of music to spectacular, technicolor life — well, it’s an experience I’m glad I shared with 600 + others last night!
(Please note that links to online listening are included below, usually in the album title!)
I spent a good chunk of this year digging into the music of Dmitri Shostakovich (2025 was the 50th anniversary of his death). Living in Soviet Russia under Stalin’s iron regime, Shostakovich’s modernistic compositions faced unending attack from jealous rivals and government bureaucrats; public dissent would have been futile, resulting in imprisonment or death for himself and his loved ones. So his 15 symphonies (conducted by Latvian maestro Mariss Jansons in a splendid bargain reissue) walk a thin line between deadpan conformity laced with mocking undertones (#2 “The Fifth of May”, #11 “The Year 1905” and even #5, his most popular work) and striking outbursts of grief in the wake of World War II’s human costs (#7 “Leningrad”, #13 “Babi Yar”). Meanwhile, Shostakovich’s 15 string quartets, composed “for the desk drawer”, were where he let himself go, taking his tragic/satiric outlook to agonized, bleak extremes. In The Soviet Experience, an engrossing bargain box on Chicago’s Cedille label, The Pacifica Quartet (currently resident at Indiana University) provide forceful, rhapsodic performances of Shostakovich’s early quartets #1-4, the expressive, moving #5-8 and #9-12, and the ghostly, late #13-15, plus selected, comparable quartets by Russian contemporaries. If Shostakovich’s music sounds intriguing to you, either of these sets would be excellent ways to gain your footing for further exploration.
While my most memorable live classical experiences this year (first in Chicago, then in Cleveland) were orchestral, my favorite classical recording was choral: A Prayer for Deliverance, recorded live by the British choir Tenebrae under the direction of Nigel Short. Organized around rich, resonant settings of the Psalms and other texts of mourning and memorial, the program spans two centuries of music and a vast swath of feeling, from the brand-new title work (an anguished interpretation of Psalm 13 by African-American composer Joel Thompson) to Herbert Howells’ peacefully luminous Requiem (incorporating Psalms 23 & 121). It’s a powerful journey from the shock of death to the peace of acceptance — and the hope of resurrection. And since I was privileged to hear the choir of St. John’s College Cambridge when their US tour came to Grand Rapids last spring, I can heartily recommend their fine new Christmas disc O Holy Night (the first spearheaded by the choir’s current director Christopher Gray), centered on Howells’ lush and gorgeous Three Carol-Anthems and Francis Poulenc’s solemnly beautiful Christmas Motets.
Moving to jazz, my favorite disc of the year has to be pianist Brad Mehldau’s deep dive into the songs of acoustic-grunge cult figure Elliott Smith, Ride into the Sun. Laying down a marker in his eloquent liner notes, Mehldau describes Smith’s work as “sublime music that holds a mirror to our sadness and breathes beauty and meaning into it”. And from a breath-snatching opening take on “Better Be Quiet Now” to the serene two-part title track (plus side quests into similar cult faves Big Star and Nick Drake), Mehldau and his numerous guests prove the point again and again; steeped in late Romantic harmonies and subtly swinging all the while, they unerringly steer Smith’s melodies through the heart of darkness to the sweet consolations of art reflecting on that pain. (Want to hear Smith’s originals? I highly recommend his 1997 indie release Either/Or, where you can hear him straining at the expressive limits of low-fi, and his 1998 major label debut XO, where he unleashes his inner McCartney/Brian Wilson in a dizzying display of studio shock and awe.)
But I have to say that Somni, the latest live collaboration between jazz-fusion big band Snarky Puppy and The Netherlands’ Metropole Orkest isn’t far behind Mehldau’s tribute to Smith. A more noir take on the filmic funk of previous collaboration Sylva (reissued last year, alongside the Puppy’s most popular live-in-studio recording We Like It Here), there’s an embarrassment of riches here, with band and orchestra deployed like interweaving chamber groups, ear-catching fades and dissolves between themes, scorching virtuoso solos on every track, and an endless variety of rhythms. The CD/BluRay version brings the added dimension of watching the musicians (playing in the round) in the moment, from a gently grooving Metropole harpist to Bobby Sparks II’s scorching clavinet/whammy bar solo on “Chimera” to Snarky’s four (!) drummers and three (!) percussionists playing off each other to ecstatic effect on postmodern blues “Recurrent”. The best capture of how immersive live music can be that I’ve seen and heard all year.
And crowding in just behind Mehldau and the Puppy is Touch, the return of Chicago arty post-rock pioneers Tortoise after a nine-year hiatus. Crisply, consistently melodic, the veteran quintet (including avant-jazz guitar ninja Jeff Parker) is subtly beguiling, even gentle at times; but the taut, understated rhythms and layers of textural grit underneath are what hold your attention. From the tolling “Layered Presence” through the ear-grabbing gear shifts of “Axial Seamount” and the squiggly/snarly/wispy “Oganesson” to the levitating movie-theme finale “Night Gang”, this is a fully collaborative vision, always straining toward unlimited vistas, pushing beyond the horizon of what most instrumental groups can conceive. Explore it along with Tortoise’s back catalog; I have a hunch you won’t be sorry!
And these other releases well worth checking out:
Disquiet, three discs of extended, hypnotic studio improvs from the minimalist/ambient/jazz Australian piano trio The Necks.
Motion II, where Blue Note Records all-star quintet Out Of/Into return with a fabulously consistent, frequently thrilling follow-up to last year’s excellent debut.
Off the Record, the newest mash-up from drummer/beatmaster Makaya McCraven, collecting four digital EPs that span a decade. Taking live improvs alongside Tortoise’s Jeff Parker, Out Of/Into’s Joel Ross on vibraphone and British tuba virtuoso Theon Cross (among other huge talents) into the studio, McCraven works hip-hop production magic on dates from Los Angeles (PopUp Shop), hometown Chicago (Hidden Out!), London (Techno Logic) and New York (The People’s Mixtape) recomposing, overdubbing, flying in other instruments and looping key beats for maximum impact. The results are unstoppably propulsive, coolly thoughtful and thoroughly enjoyable even at their wildest.
Joni’s Jazz, a four-disc offshoot of Joni Mitchell’s ongoing Archive series. Mitchell comes by her jazz pretensions honestly, claiming Miles Davis as an early muse, working with bass titan Charles Mingus in his final months, and regularly collaborating with Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter over the decades. There are more than a few tedious moments here, where Mitchell swaps out her melodic gift to climb on her lyrical soapbox;, but there are numerous highlights that compensate: check the loose swing of early classics like “Marcie” or “In France They Kiss On Main Street”; the numerous peaks of Mitchell’s genre explorations from Court and Spark through Mingus; later big-band collaborations (“Both Sides Now”); and oddities like “Love” and “The Sire of Sorrow (Job’s Sad Song)” where Mitchell languidly chants paraphrased Scripture while Shorter takes flight above her.
Spirit of Cecilia 
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