Jason Gubbels
latest articles
RIP Ornette Coleman, Who Confounded Most People And Humbled Us All
“There is a law in what I’m playing, but that law is a law that when you get tired of it, you can change it.” So said incomparable musical innovator Ornette Coleman, who died this morning at the age of 85, and while his career was full of these kinds of delightfully cryptic remarks, few unpack his s...
Jazz Needs A Better Sense of Humor
What can it mean for jazz as a living art when the most hotly debated genre event of 2014 was a satirical post on a humor blog? Only Charlie Haden's death earlier that month can rival the New Yorker's awkward July 31 unveiling of writer Django Gold's "Sonny Rollins: In His Own Words," a 480-word g...