Tom Reney looks back at Duke Ellington’s “New Orleans Suite,” and the crucial role that Duke and festival producer George Wein played in the establishment of the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, which just completed its 49th annual presentation in the Crescent City. Wein’s insistence that any festival he produced would include Ellington, who “…

For JazzBeat 30, Tom Reney pays tribute to Nat Hentoff, who died on January 7 at 91. The Boston-born journalist wrote primarily on First Amendment issues for the Village Voice for 50 years, but was also a renowned jazz critic and historian. In the early 1960s, Hentoff produced an outstanding series of albums for Candid Records by Charles Mingus, Cl…

In the latest edition of NEPR's Jazz Beat, Tom Reney highlights the prominence of jazz in Bob Dylan’s memoir, Chronicles, Volume 1, and a critical moment of impact that the music had on the return to form that the Nobel laureate has exhibited since 1997.Par NEPR-NEW ENGLAND PUBLIC RADIO

For the latest edition of New England Public Radio's Jazz Beat, Tom Reney speaks with Loren Schoenberg, the founding director and resident scholar at the National Jazz Museum in Harlem. The museum has just released the first volume of recordings from the Savory Collection, a treasure trove of jazz recorded off of broadcasts in the 1930s and early ‘…

In this edition of Jazz Beat, NEPR's Tom Reney pays tribute to the jazz legend Phil Woods. The late, great alto saxophonist was born in Springfield, Mass, 85 years ago. This month, Downbeat Magazine announced that Phil has been elected to its Hall of Fame. Listen here for an overview of Woods's career and numerous samples of his great music.…