The Gig (Newsletter)

So, Gabriel Kahane and I did a thing. Earlier this week, we hoped on Substack Live — he from his music studio in Portland, Oregon, me from a home office just outside of Philly — for a talk we called Honest Songcraft in the Slop Era. It was, as we’d hoped, a far-ranging yet focused conversation about creative practice, productive friction, and the way we’re all making do at a moment of peak precarity. It was also, as I knew it would be, a lot of fun.

The Edward MacDowell Medal, awarded each summer at the MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire, honors artists of exceptional achievement across a range of disciplines. Its first recipient was Thornton Wilder, who worked on Our Town during one of his MacDowell residencies. Since then the medal has been bestowed on the likes of Edgard Varèse, Georgia O’Keeffe, Sonia Sanchez, and Jasper Johns.

A reunited Yeah No — Cuong Vu, Skúli Sverrisson, Chris Speed, Jim Black — at Solar Myth in Philadelphia, April 11, 2026. (The Gig) Chris Speed’s Yeah No sounded like nothing else when they first formed 30 years ago.

We bring you glad tidings of good conversation on Tuesday, June 16, as a composer and a critic find common ground on Substack Live. We’re calling this discussion “Honest Songcraft in the Slop Era,” with all due sincerity (and just a little cheek). The composer in question has a newsletter, Gabriel Kahane: Words & Music. The critic is yours truly, Nate Chinen, posting at The Gig. You’re reading this on one of our platforms, so I’ll assume you know who’s who.

JAŸ-Z at The Roots Picnic, May 30, 2026. (Courtesy of Roc Nation) First: a strange silhouette in a blue haze, crowned by an unfamiliar nimbus. The Afro was the first reveal1 — in which he reveled, surveying the crowd in imperial silence for 40 seconds. Then came the delirious bombast of “Hovi Baby,” followed by a second reveal. If you’ve read one thing about the headlining set last Saturday on Philadelphia’s Belmont Plateau, it surely has something to do with this.

‘Gregory Hutchinson’ by Tatiana Gorilovsky, JJA Awards Jazz Photo of the Year. This image above captures Gregory Hutchinson performing with the Christian McBride Trio at Ronnie Scott’s, on Nov. 4, 2025. Taken by the London-based photographer Tatiana Gorilovsky, it was just deservedly named Jazz Photo of the Year in the 31st annual Jazz Journalists Association Jazz Awards.

Reconsidering the implications of The Bridge Sonny Rollins, pictured in 2010. (John Abbott) Sonny Rollins. What can you even say? He was the last of the Mohicans1 — an essential piece of jazz’s midcentury-modern picture, the only surviving subject in Art Kane’s iconic yearbook photograph A Great Day in Harlem. But longevity is just one factor at play. We lionize Sonny, profoundly mourn his passing, for the steadfast clarity of his musical convictions, and the way he carried them forward.

A fresh look at Miles Davis' best decade. Hello! Thank you to everyone who shared, commented on, or otherwise engaged with Miles Davis at Lennie’s on the Turnpike earlier this week. And extra-special thanks if you also support The Gig as a paid subscriber. I’ve been publishing these outside the paywall, because I want everyone to have access if they want it. But if you value the writing that appears here and haven’t yet upgraded to a paid subcription, please consider it now.

A photograph, a poem, a point in time Every tribute is a translation. The subject exists in itself, and however faithful or fanciful the reverential gesture, there’s always a distance between that point of origin and this port of arrival. Miles Davis — who named a late-career album Aura, though probably not with Walter Benjamin in mind1 — held fast to this truth.

Davóne Tines and company in a 2018 production of The Black Clown. (Maggie Hall) At a pivotal juncture in The Black Clown,Davóne Tines joins an onstage coterie, taking part in their jubilant kick line as the band makes a jitterbug ruckus. Freedom! sings the assembled in full-chested gospel harmony, raising the proverbial rafters, while a stilt-walker in a stovepiper teeters along the margins.