Though hip-hop artists have made it a genre unto itself, the mixtape, a homemade cassette of songs, was the Spotify playlist of the 1980s and ‘90s. Mixtapes were playable, tradable declarations of musical allegiances and taste, a medium of exchange and sometimes winsome mash notes to crushes, delivering their message at 1 7/8 ips.
True, it’s hard to imagine jazz nerds assembling cassettes of favorite Maynard Ferguson cuts to give to romantic objects (harder still to imagine they had such objects). Still guitarist Dan Bruce liked the concept so much that he’s making a mixtape live and on stage by arranging songs performed by Liz Bullock, Ray Flanagan, Jinari Kemet and Gretchen Pleuss with an a-list jazz ensemble.