“The Candelight Lounge” Commission for Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards
The great poet Yusef Komunyakaa was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards this last September and I was fortunate to have been commissioned to compose and perform a brief piece of music for the event. Celebrating “90 Years of truth telling through literature,” you can watch our performance in the…
Playing a lot this season…
I’ve had the good fortune of working a lot in varied contexts this season. Recent hits in the last few months have included my own Basket Case Quartet, Marcus Lewis’ Brass and Boujee, Bobby Selvaggio’s Red Rhinoceros Octet, writing and performing a piece honoring Yusef Komunyakaa for the Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards, and a bunch of…
Cry Baby – or – look mom, I’m on a Podcast!
2 | Jazz Is Dead with Dr. AJ Kluth Show Notes: I talk with Dr. AJ Kluth about the vibrant LA jazz scene, the Jazz is Dead phenomenon, and how this music helps us think about—and calls into question—the distinction between “jazz” and “popular music.”Read on Substack If you’re into thinking about popular music and…
Black Voltron’s Doin’ the Damn Thing
Rest In Beats: A Live Band Tribute to J Dilla & Nujabes A few months back I got a call to play a date with Black Voltron, an up-and-coming horn band in Cleveland. I didn’t know about them yet but my interest was piqued when I learned the show would highlight music by J Dilla…
For July 4, 2025 – Max Roach’s “The Basket Case” (1963)
Max Roach, 1956 (© Gilles Petard/Redferns) Last summer I spent some time at the Library of Congress looking through the collected papers of Max Roach. I was knocked out. His correspondence, music, notebooks, manuscripts – just incredible to be so close to his ideas and experiences manifest in those archived materials. I was specifically checking…
Chief Xian aTunde Adjuah and the Creolizing Subject
Been a minute – this update is about a paper I gave at this year’s IASPM US conference, held March 13-15 at USC’s Thornton School of Music in Los Angeles. I’m grateful for this community of scholars comprising IASPM that’s so consistently committed to thinking broadly about the significance of popular music and its greater…
Bringing Alan Nakagawa to Cleveland
In Spring ’24 I had a student working on a research project about music/culture in camps where Japanese Americans had been imprisoned during WWII. I put him in touch with my friend, LA sound artist Alan Nakagawa, who has done extensive archival and art making in Southern California related to this topic. Turns out the…
IASPM US ’24 Conference Paper – or – AJ Tries to Figure Out What “Genre” Is.
I’m stoked to be presenting a paper tomorrow morning at Drexel University as part of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music’s US conference. It’s got the kind of awful title: “Phantasmatic Identity Over Opinion?”: Making Sense of New Grammy Category “Alternative Jazz.” What can I say, the title got a bit out…
Vernacular Bootleg from ’22
Just spotted this video (thanks Rob!) from sitting in with Vernacular back in September 2022. This was the record release show for RA Washington and Jah Nada’s In Search of Our Father’s Gardens at Crobar. I don’t get to do enough of this kind of explorative music making these days – always grateful for these…
CWRU Pop Ensemble Concert (and a few charts)
I’ve been directing the Pop Ensemble at CWRU for the first time this last semester and have been super impressed by our class. We’ve got 17 undergrad of all levels in the ensemble – many non-majors – and they’re doing a great job learning tunes they like from a broad set of genres. Students choose/advocate…
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AJ Kluth 