KNKX Studio Sessions

Otis Taylor is a unique Blues artist for many reasons. With 15 studio albums and 12 Blues Music Awards, he has made his mark as an originator of Trance Blues, a style that describes his mesmerizing approach to music and the blues.

“I’m a true believer,” trumpeter Marquis Hill told us. The modern, acoustic sounds of his Blacktet draws inspiration from across the history of jazz. It’s also music of the 21 st century, created by young musicians who see a distinct through line that renders genres meaningless. “It’s a continuum,” Hill says. “It’s all connected.”

She's a legend of blues piano, but singer-songwriter Marcia Ball is so charming you quickly consider her a good friend. In the KNKX studios, our audience cheered on Ball and her band like they were gathered for a good time on the front porch.

Celebrating his new album Overjoyed , pianist Larry Fuller returned to the KNKX studios to play a few songs and talk about his working trio, his partners on the new album, and feeling good at the piano.

Some of the earliest music of America, created by the enslaved Africans and their descendants along the country’s southeastern coast, is getting a fresh makeover by the young musicians of Ranky Tanky. They performed four songs from their hit second album, Good Time , to a loving studio audience here at KNKX that we’re proud to share with you.

Since he was a teenager, guitarist Lee Ritenour has been proud to call Dave Grusin his friend. While in Seattle for a stretch of nights at Jazz Alley, Lee and Dave returned to the KNKX studios to play together and for each other.

A true icon of Northwest jazz stopped by the KNKX studios recently. Singer, songwriter, educator, bandleader Greta Matassa has been a professional musician since her teen years, and was recently inducted into the Earshot Jazz Hall of Fame. With her long-running band, Matassa gave an appreciative studio audience a thrilling taste of her new album, Portrait . Featuring a portrait of Greta's mother painted by Greta's father, Portrait gets the CD release party treatment at Egan's in Ballard on June

Before starting our studio session with Brooklyn-based guitarist Will Bernard, with Seattle favorites Joe Doria and Tarik Abouzied on organ and drums, I told him most of the interview would focus on "the out-of-towner." Will said, "wait, I'm here all the time!"

Performing in the KNKX studios, young jazz upstarts Dylan Hayes (keyboards) and Xavier Lecouturier compose intricate jazz with improvisational energy. It's a tricky balancing act that these two Californians continue to refine, made easier by their relatively longtime working relationship.

Seattle Rep’s show “Nina Simone Four Women” plays through June 2. It’s not a biography and it’s not a musical review. This “play with music” imagines Nina Simone in the 16 th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, just after the 1963 bombing that killed four young girls.