The Buzz: The JJA Podcast

The Jazz Journalists Association is a membership organization founded in 1986. We promote the creation and dissemination of accurate, ethical, informed journalism on all jazz’s genres, and encourage innovative use of media to spur the growth, development and education of audiences for jazz. Public programs include Seeing Jazz Photography Master Classes, The Buzz podcast, celebrations of Jazz Heroes and Jazz Awards, and the website JJANews.org. Theme "Big Vic" composed by John Michaels Featuring Makaya McCraven Geoff Vidaland Mark Dunlap recorded by Doug Hewitt. Podcast edited by Wiz Petta.

The Buzz: The JJA Podcast is a music podcast hosted by The Jazz Journalists Association, with 69 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80. PitchCentric scores this show on Booking Probability, Listen Score, and live audience signals refreshed every 24 hours.

The Jazz Journalists Association hosts The Buzz: The JJA Podcast, a music show with 69 episodes published.

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  The Buzz: The JJA Podcast

  John Coltrane at 100: The Rehabilitation Gap

  Sep 7, 202613 min

  For John Coltrane's hundredth birthday, this episode of The Buzz has host Lawrence Peryer delivering a solo monologue tracing how critics heard Coltrane while he was alive, and how that judgment has shifted, or hasn't, in the sixty-five years since. The piece opens with discussion of John Tynan's 1961 Down Beat review calling Coltrane and Eric Dolphy's playing "anti-jazz," then turns to LeRoi Jones (later Amiri Baraka), who used the same root word, "anarchy," that Tynan had used derisively, but as praise, in his essay "Jazz and the White Critic." From there it follows Ira Gitler's "sheets of sound," coined to give critics language for what Coltrane was doing instead of dismissing it as noise, and Miles Davis's On the Corner, hated at release and reclaimed twenty years later. The heart of the episode is Coltrane's relationship with Albert Ayler: the phone calls, the shared bills at the Village Vanguard, Coltrane pushing producer Bob Thiele to sign Ayler to Impulse, and Ayler's quartet opening Coltrane's 1967 funeral with a set built from their own compositions. Coltrane is close to a saint today. Ayler is still a name that has to be explained. The episode closes on a live critical fight: Phil Freeman's recent Brooklyn Rail case that Coltrane's real peak ended in 1965, against guitarist Nels Cline, drummer Jack DeJohnette, and saxophonist Peter Brötzmann's defense of the late recordings Freeman dismisses. The same argument that split critics in 1961 is still unresolved in 2026. Musical excerpts heard in this episode: John Coltrane, "Chasin' the Trane" (Live at the Village Vanguard, 1961); Miles Davis, "Black Satin" (On the Corner, 1972); Albert Ayler Quartet, "Truth Is Marching In," from the album, In Greenwich Village. Buzzworthy Notes Guest & Host Lawrence Peryer — host and managing editor of The Buzz Discussed John Coltrane · Eric Dolphy · John Tynan (Down Beat critic who wrote the 1961 "anti-jazz" review) · LeRoi Jones / Amiri Baraka ("Jazz and the White Critic," collected in Black Music ) · Ira Gitler (coined "sheets of sound") · Miles Davis, On the Corner (1972) · Albert Ayler · Ornette Coleman · Phil Freeman (critic, Brooklyn Rail / Burning Ambulance) · Nels Cline · Jack DeJohnette · Peter Brötzmann · Meditations (1966) · Interstellar Space (recorded 1967) · Saint John Coltrane African Orthodox Church, San Francisco Support for The JJA comes in part from the Jazz Foundation of America, providing emergency assistance, healthcare, and performance opportunities to performers, composers and others in need. Visit jazzfoundation.org . This podcast is made possible with the support of Jazz Road, a national initiative of South Arts, which is funded by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation with additional support from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Don’t miss new episodes of The Buzz . Make sure you follow us wherever you listen to podcasts. For more from the Jazz Journalists Association, go to JJANews.org.

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  The Buzz: The JJA Podcast

  "We Should Talk About Music": Matthew Shipp and Ethan Iverson on Writing as Practice

  Jul 6, 202654 min

  For this episode of The Buzz , JJA Book Committee chair Bob Blumenthal speaks with the winners of the 2026 JJA Jazz Awards’ two Book of the Year categories: pianist Matthew Shipp, honored for Black Mystery School Pianists and Other Writings (Autonomedia), and pianist and critic Ethan Iverson, honored as the writer behind Oceans of Time: The Musical Autobiography of Billy Hart (Cymbal Press). Shipp and Iverson are both working musicians who write, and the conversation keeps circling back to what that dual life costs and gives them. Shipp traces his path from commissioned blog pieces to a book collecting essays on David S. Ware, Paul Bley, and Wayne Shorter, plus prose poems on boxing, decadence, and the New York club scene he came up in during the 1980s. Iverson describes fifteen years on the road with Billy Hart before finally getting the older drummer on tape, reading him the manuscript twice, and watching Hart pull stories back out both times. Both men also discovered, mid-conversation, an unlikely shared history: each once worked as a dance-company music director, Shipp for a small post-Cunningham troupe in the 1980s, Iverson for the Mark Morris Dance Group decades later. The episode also catches Shipp and Iverson comparing notes on a much more recent flashpoint: the online reaction to André 3000’s ambient flute album, which briefly made Shipp’s own criticism go viral. But the conversation’s real center is a shared argument about criticism itself. Both reject the old line that music writing is “dancing about architecture,” insisting instead that jazz criticism, done by people who actually play the music, is inseparable from the playing. (The musical excerpts heard in this episode are “Iverson’s Odyssey” from the Billy Hart Quartet’s 2006 album Quartet and “Nu Bop,” the title track from Matthew Shipp’s 2002 album on Thirsty Ear.) Buzzworthy Notes Guest & Host Matthew Shipp — official site Ethan Iverson — official site and Do the Math archive Bob Blumenthal — JJA Book Committee chair; two-time Grammy winner for album notes Discussed Black Mystery School Pianists and Other Writings — Matthew Shipp (Autonomedia, 2025); introduction by Yuko Otomo Oceans of Time: The Musical Autobiography of Billy Hart — Billy Hart, as told to Ethan Iverson (Cymbal Press, 2025) Billy Hart — NEA Jazz Master; Iverson has played in his working quartet since 2003 David S. Ware — saxophonist; Shipp played in his quartet for sixteen years Paul Bley — pianist; subject of one of Shipp’s essays Wayne Shorter, “Night Dreamer” — the 1964 Blue Note album Bob Blumenthal cites as still holding up on repeat listening Steve Dalachinsky — poet; longtime friend and collaborator of Shipp’s, referenced throughout the book Dewey Redman — saxophonist; the first musician whose stories convinced Iverson of the value of oral history Nasheet Waits — drummer; source of the “start playing like I’m teaching” line Iverson cites Robin D. G. Kelley , Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original — the Monk biography both guests recommend; Kelley also blurbed Shipp’s book Thelonious Monk / Joe Turner, " In Paris " - the 1954 album both Matt and Ethan enthused over near the end of the discussion Arthur Taylor, Notes and Tones — 1977 collection of musician-to-musician interviews Shipp calls a formative read J. C. Thomas, Chasin’ the Trane — early Coltrane biography Shipp says changed his life at twelve or fourteen Hampton Hawes with Don Asher, Raise Up Off Me — the memoir Iverson used as his model for pacing and length while writing Oceans of Time The 2026 JJA Jazz Awards Oceans of Time is Book of the Year, Biography or Autobiography Black Mystery School Pianists and Other Writings is Book of the Year about Jazz: History, Criticism and Culture Full list of 2026 winners: JJA Jazz Awards · announcement Support for The JJA comes in part from the Jazz Foundation of America, providing emergency assistance, healthcare, and performance opportunities to performers, composers and others in need. Visit jazzfoundation.org . This podcast is made possible with the support of Jazz Road, a national initiative of South Arts, which is funded by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation with additional support from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Don’t miss new episodes of The Buzz . Make sure you follow us wherever you listen to podcasts. For more from the Jazz Journalists Association, go to JJANews.org.

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  The Buzz: The JJA Podcast

  Zan Stewart, JJA Lifetime Achievement Honoree: A Real Jazz Advocate

  Jun 1, 202638 min

  For this episode of The Buzz , JJA President Emeritus Howard Mandel speaks with Zan Stewart, the JJA's 2026 Lifetime Achievement in Jazz Journalism honoree. Zan Stewart spent thirty-five years covering jazz as a beat reporter writing weekly features, overnight reviews, and club listings through long-term runs at the Los Angeles Times and the Newark Star-Ledger . His liner notes to Eric Dolphy: The Complete Prestige Recordings earned an ASCAP–Deems Taylor Award. He is also a working tenor saxophonist, and the two roles were always intertwined: Stewart came to jazz journalism as an advocate with a reporter's eye and a player's ear. In this conversation, he retraces his path from a hi-fi in Ojai to the clubs of San Francisco, with a lot of music in between. They cover his early formation in the music (his father was at the Palomar Ballroom in 1935 the night Benny Goodman kicked off the swing era), two decades at the LA Times under Leonard Feather, his move to the Star-Ledger in Newark, his 2014 debut recording The Street Is Making Music , and his current work writing liner notes after a medical battle with oral cancer and osteonecrosis that has sidelined his playing. He also describes the box of cassette tapes in his possession containing unarchived conversations with Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Sonny Rollins, and McCoy Tyner, that he hopes to get out into the world. (The musical excerpts heard in this episode are "Hampton's Pulpit" from the Hampton Hawes Quartet's 1991 reissue All Night Session and "The Street Is Making Music" from Zan Stewart's 2014 album of the same name.) Buzzworthy Notes Guest & Host Zan Stewart Howard Mandel Discussed Leonard Feather — jazz critic, Los Angeles Times ; mentor to Stewart Eric Dolphy: The Complete Prestige Recordings — liner notes by Zan Stewart; recipient of the ASCAP–Deems Taylor Award Hampton Hawes — pianist; subject of Stewart's first published interview Hear Me Talkin' to Ya — edited by Nat Shapiro and Nat Hentoff (Rinehart, 1955); a formative text for Stewart Sonny Rollins — official website Oliver Nelson, Straight Ahead — Prestige, 1961; features Eric Dolphy on bass clarinet Albert Dailey — pianist; performed with Stewart's early band in Santa Barbara The 2026 JJA Lifetime Achievement in Jazz Journalism Award Other nominees: Dan Ouellette, Nate Chinen, and Ben Ratliff Learn more about JJA Awards Support for The JJA comes in part from the Jazz Foundation of America, providing emergency assistance, healthcare, and performance opportunities to performers, composers and others in need. Visit jazzfoundation.org . This podcast is made possible with the support of Jazz Road, a national initiative of South Arts, which is funded by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation with additional support from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Don’t miss new episodes of The Buzz . Make sure you follow us wherever you listen to podcasts. For more from the Jazz Journalists Association, go to JJANews.org.

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  The Buzz: The JJA Podcast

  Miles Davis at 100: What We Remember and What We Miss

  May 4, 202628 min

  Miles Davis would have turned one hundred this year. The centennial has brought the somewhat predictable wave of reissues, retrospectives, and tributes. But which Miles keeps coming back? The suit-and-narrow-lapels Miles of the fifties. Kind of Blue as sonic wallpaper. The Second Great Quintet as the canonical high point. In this episode, Howard Mandel - JJA president emeritus and author of Miles Ornette Cecil: Jazz Beyond Jazz - sits down with three guests who've spent serious time inside the music: bassist and author Melvin Gibbs, pianist and scholar Bob Gluck, and journalist Martin Johnson. They push past the myth and talk about what the centennial framing gets right, what it flattens, and why Miles keeps mattering even when the cultural idea of 'cool' has largely moved on without him. Learn More About: Miles Davis Howard Mandel Melvin Gibbs Bob Gluck Martin Johnson Support for The JJA comes in part from the Jazz Foundation of America, providing emergency assistance, healthcare, and performance opportunities to performers, composers and others in need. Visit jazzfoundation.org . This podcast is made possible with the support of Jazz Road, a national initiative of South Arts, which is funded by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation with additional support from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Don’t miss new episodes of The Buzz . Make sure you follow us wherever you listen to podcasts. For more from the Jazz Journalists Association, go to JJANews.org.

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  The Buzz: The JJA Podcast

  Free Tickets, Steak Dinners, and the Ethics of Jazz Journalism

  Apr 6, 202641 min

  Jazz criticism has always operated in close quarters: small rooms, tight communities, artists who become sources and sometimes friends. That proximity is part of what makes the writing worth reading. It's also what makes the ethics complicated. This episode explores that tension. The guests have significant experience between them navigating exactly these questions, and the conversation goes to some candid places, including a few confessions that probably took some time to make. Featuring: Rick Mitchell Hannah Edgar Paul de Barros Support for The JJA comes in part from the Jazz Foundation of America, providing emergency assistance, healthcare, and performance opportunities to performers, composers and others in need. Visit jazzfoundation.org . This podcast is made possible with the support of Jazz Road, a national initiative of South Arts, which is funded by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation with additional support from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Don’t miss new episodes of The Buzz . Make sure you follow us wherever you listen to podcasts. For more from the Jazz Journalists Association, go to JJANews.org.

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