Smooth Jazz

Lana Del Rey announced the LA to the Moon Tour, her 24-date trek in support of her recent LP Lust for Life.





The 2018 arena tour kicks off January 5th at Minneapolis' Target Center and runs through February 28th with a tour-closing gig in Honolulu, Hawaii. Jhene Aiko and Kali Uchis will serve as Del Rey's two opening acts for the trek.

Lana Del Rey Tour Dates
January 5 - Minneapolis, MN @ Target Center
January 7 - Denver, CO @ Pepsi Center
January 9 - Kansas City, MO @ Sprint Center
January 11 - Chicago, IL @ United Center
January 13 - Boston, MA @ TD Garden
January 15 - Toronto, ON @ Air Canada Centre
January 17 - Detroit, MI @ Little Caesars Arena
January 19 - Newark, NJ @ Prudential Center
January 21 - Philadelphia, PA @ Wells Fargo Center
January 23 - Columbus, OH @ Schottenstein Center
January 25 - Washington, DC @ Capital One Arena
January 26 - State College, PA @ Bryce Jordan Center
January 30 - Charlotte, NC @ Spectrum Center
February 1 - Ft. Lauderdale, FL @ BB&T Center
February 2 - Orlando, FL @ Amway Center
February 5 - Atlanta, GA @ Philips Arena
February 6 - Nashville, TN @ Bridgestone Arena
February 8 - Dallas, TX @ American Airlines Center
February 10 - Houston, TX @ Toyota Center
February 11 - Austin, TX @ Frank Erwin Center
February 13 - Phoenix, AZ @ Talking Stick Resort Arena
February 15 - San Diego, CA @ Valley View Casino Center
February 16 - Las Vegas, NV @ Mandalay Bay Event Center
February 28 - Honolulu, HI @ Waikiki Shell

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Pink recruited Eminem for "Revenge," a new song off the singer's newly issued seventh LP, Beautiful Trauma.



Seemingly channeling Eminem's Slim Shady LP, producers Max Martin and Shellback couch dark lyrics about revenge on a cheating ex under a bubbly musical bed that wouldn't be out of place next to the rapper's 1999 hit "My Name Is."

"So when you're driving to his house and you pass me while I'm driving a hearse," Eminem sings. "Just remember: you cheated on me first. You're a whore. You're a whore. This is war."

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Chris Cornell, Elton John, Dave Grohl, Iggy Pop and former Nirvana bassist Krist Novoselic are among the high-profile musicians who donated personal items used to create a unique line of timepieces, the Rock LTD Collection, The Hollywood Reporter notes. Cornell – who died by suicide at age 52 in May, contributed a guitar strap to the new watch line, which benefits the Recording Academy's MusiCares MAP Fund, dedicated to addiction recovery treatment.




"Addiction is a disease, and we lose far too many loved ones to the illness each day," the Soundgarden frontman's widow, Vicky Cornell, said in a statement. "MusiCares is a crucial organization and the MusiCares MAP Fund 100 percent supports the music community in its fight to protect those battling this affliction."

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Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood will release his 2014 orchestral piece "Water" on vinyl November 10th via the Australian Chamber Orchestra and ABC Classics.





The Australian Chamber Orchestra commissioned the piece, which Greenwood wrote after serving as the company's composer in residence in 2012. The composition features strings, piano, flutes, keyboards and the Indian instrument, the tanpura. Per the ACO's website, "Water" was inspired by the Philip Larkin poem of the same name, "which alludes to a glass of water 'where any-angled light would congregate endlessly.'"

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Kendrick Lamar struts around, eating Chinese takeout in a Kobe Bryant Lakers jersey, in a surreal clip for "New Freezer," the rapper's collaborative track with Rich the Kid.




The video opens with the mysterious shot of a handgun emerging from velvet red curtains. From there, Rich the Kid cruises around a city late at night in a futuristic car, revels in a huge pile of cash and hangs out near a pay phone against a deep-black backdrop. When not eating leftovers, Lamar pops up in a different – more conventional – sports car.

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A Bee Gees musical is in the works, with Universal Theatrical Group securing rights to the legendary band's life story and music. Singer Barry Gibb, the group's only surviving member, will executive produce the as-yet-untitled project.





UTG, Universal's live theater division, secured rights to the musical with Barry Gibb, Yvonne Gibb (wife of the late Maurice Gibb until the singer's 2003 death) and the estate of Robin Gibb (who died in 2012). In a statement, Barry Gibb called the project a "wonderful opportunity" for his family.

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The gospel-soul icon's third set with producer-collaborator Jeff Tweedy shows his touch more prominently than ever: For the first time he's penned all the songs (including three co-writes with Staples), recording them with his son Spencer, Wilco drummer Glenn Kotche and various Chicago multitaskers. The result is an object lesson in collaborative activism, with Staples tilting away from Sixties R&B formalism but doubling down on topicality.

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One month after Sharon Jones died of pancreatic cancer in 2016, her closest friends and family gathered at the Universal Church of God in Queens, New York, to celebrate and mourn the exuberant, Grammy-nominated soul and funk vocalist. As a teenager, Jones had written a song titled "Call on God" that she would often sing with other choir members. Later in life, she'd use it to warm up in the studio and recorded the track in 2007 with backing band the Dap-Kings for their third album 100 Days, 100 Nights. But the group already had another gospel song on the album and the track was permanently shelved.




Now, many of these same members who sang with Jones through the decades were in church, belting Jones' moving spiritual. "We were all floored," says Neal Sugarman, Dap-Kings saxophonist and co-founder of Jones' label Daptone Records. With emotions still high following the service, the singers entered Daptone's Brooklyn studio to "perform" with Jones one last time on a heart-wrenching version of the song that appears on Jones' recently released final album Soul of a Woman.



"The first time people hear [Soul of a Woman] – especially the hardcore Sharon fans – people are going to get real down and then it's going to take them back up," says Sugarman. "From my perspective, it's one more nail in the annals of classic soul records because Sharon has proven through her catalog and live shows that she is one of the greats. Hopefully these are classic records, which means they'll live on forever."

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The music that saxophonist Pharoah Sanders made in the late Sixties and early Seventies will probably always be categorized as jazz. But that seems wrong, somehow. Where bebop is all about form and its infinite variations, the sounds put forth on Sanders albums such as 1967's Tauhid, 1969's Jewels of Thought, and 1970's Deaf Dumb Blind (Summun Bukmun Umyun) – records filled with celebratory Latin grooves; vicious, often cacophonous sax playing; and expansive drone-like bliss-outs – seem far more concerned with the Infinite.

And that idea still resonates today. It's the driving force, for example, behind the music of breakout saxist Kamasi Washington, whose entire approach – large band, long songs, spirituality to spare – feels like the second coming of Pharoah. (Meanwhile, the 77-year-old Sanders continues to tour the world.)

Originally released on the Impulse! label and reissued this month individually and in a deluxe three-LP set courtesy of Anthology Recordings, these albums find the Little Rock, Arkansas–born Farrell Sanders – he started going by "Pharoah" in the early Sixties while working with the ancient-Egypt–inspired Sun Ra – near the start of his career as a bandleader. Tauhid, the earliest album in this set, is the saxophonist's sophomore outing. By the time Deaf Dumb Blind was released, Pharoah was only about 30, but he had seen a lot by then: In addition to making his own recordings and gigging with Ra, he had spent almost two years in John Coltrane's final working band, which featured Alice Coltrane on piano. Like those artists and Sun Ra, Pharoah became a renowned yet often misunderstood torchbearer for what was then known as free jazz, or simply the New Thing.
But Pharoah has also been filed under "spiritual jazz," a label that better describes what's heard on these albums. The epic tunes are essentially quests, with any number of peaks and valleys along the way. In that sense, Pharoah's music on these albums can be seen as an extension of John Coltrane's seminal spiritual odyssey A Love Supreme, but with more musicians, more movements and more freedom.

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Quincy Jones' new subscription video-on-demand platform dedicated entirely to jazz will launch December 15th. Qwest TV will offer a curated lineup of over 100 "concerts, documentaries, interviews and archives of premium jazz and related eclectic music original content."




The initial line-up boasts films featuring Aretha Franklin, Anderson .Paak, B.B. King, Robert Glasper, Sun Ra, Bobby McFerrin, Chick Corea, Wayne Shorter, Elvin Jones and more. Qwest TV has enlisted journalists and jazz experts to pen liner notes for each program, while subscribers will also receive guided playlists curated by musicians, label owners, producers and other jazz aficionados. The initial lineup is available to peruse on the Qwest TV website.

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