John McLaughlin was a 27-year-old, relatively unknown guitarist in 1969 when he arrived in the U.S. from England to join drummer Tony Williams’ Lifetime band with organist Larry Young. His background was broad and without category.  He had been brought up by a concert violinist mother to love classical music,…

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Pianist,composer and bandleader Chick Corea is one of the jazz genre’s most unique and diverse artists. One of his earliest recordings, Now He Sings, Now He Sobs, is a landmark piano trio recording. His stint with Miles Davis, who encouraged him to explore the electric piano, changed the sound of jazz…

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Jazz-fusion, jazz-funk, jazz-rock…we’ve never been quite sure how to define the music that plugged in around 1969 with Miles Davis’ In A Silent Way and burned out some five years later when “jazz” pretty much left the hyphenate and all the other components—the things that hybridized it—began to short-circuit in…

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In his liner notes, producer-arranger Bob Belden calls this meeting of Miles Davis alumni and Indian musicians “a grand gesture at reconciliation between disparate cultures bound together by a universal truth. Music.” That word “reconciliation” is a bit off, since Indian music has influenced everyone from the Beatles to Zappa.…

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