BMAs // Jazz

A guide to the 2024 Boston Music Awards

The 2024 Boston Music Awards is at Big Night Live on December 11.

Hump Day News was nominated for Best Music Publication.

You can vote for all the nominees here.

To honor our glorious symbolic inclusion and insufferable clout chasing, we’re rolling out the BMAde Betterz series for 2024. In this series we send the nominees through the meat grinder to yield three main categories of sodium-enriched meat byproducts.

The “New To Us”
- Never heard of them, or at least never heard them. But they’re on the list, so let’s have a listen.
The “House Specials”
- We’ve covered these acts, we treasure these acts, we 100% get why they’ve been nominated.
The “New To You”
- These artists didn’t make the list, but they should have!

Ace the Quiz, Win the Tix

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Hump Nights

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Ace the Quiz, Win the Tix 〰️ Hump Nights 〰️

Hump Nights

Nov 13

The story of women making the Boston music scene. In-house appearance and Q&A (and maybe a uke performance?) with Amanda Palmer (Dresden Dolls).

The Modern Faces / Perfectly Lethal / Whyte Lipstick / Luddites

Nov 13

The Modern Faces, pop punk powurrr. With Perfectly Lethal, Whyte Lipstick, Luddites.

Linnea’s Garden / The Ghouls / Catwolf / Goodkarma

Nov 14

Linnea's Garden EP release, w/The Ghouls, Catwolf, and Goodkarma at Deep Cuts.

Nov 15

The 4th Wall celebrates its 1-year anniversary with Trash Sun, Lady Pills, Petal Dance, and the Dreamtoday at the Capitol Theater.

Nov 22

Hard rocking Cortez has a real metal ripper with their new album Thieves and Charlatans. With Worshipper and Curse the Son.

Nov 30

Punk in broad daylight. Get there early for WORM, Presidential Disgrace, Screw Cart, and Neponset Monastary.

Dec 14

Biribá Union w/ Balla Kouyaté at the Regent Theatre.

Dec 26

Bohemian Rhapsody Sing-Along. The movie like you've never seen it before: host, goody bags, glam ups encouraged!

Dec 31

Bohemian Rhapsody Sing-Along. The movie like you've never seen it before: host, goody bags, glam ups encouraged!

Hump Nights

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Ace the Quiz, Win the Tix

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Hump Nights 〰️ Ace the Quiz, Win the Tix 〰️

Jazz Artist of the Year // Nominees

BT-ALC Big Band // Club d'Elf // Darren Barrett // Grace Kelly // Ize Trio // Joe Hunt // Seventh Sun // Terri Lyne Carrington // The Fringe // Tim Carman Trio

Check out “Black Narcissus” by Seventh Sun. Horn-forward jazz with spacey keys, guitar, and bass on the back end. Swanky.

Ize Trio’s latest album includes “suites” in the title. So they’re either trying to sell you some Adobe software, or they’re just real classy motherfuckers. And Club d’Elf shouldn’t be “New To Us” because the superlative jazz collective have been gigging for years in the area. But Hump Day News still doesn’t have any live coverage. That ends in 2025.

Shout out to the Lilypad (and their Live Music Venue nomination) because the Inman Square destination provides a regular landing spot for The Fringe and Joe Hunt. The former have a weekly residency, playing the late show every Monday night. The latter can be found playing with the Joe Hunt Group at least once a month.

Joe Hunt

Hunt For Red Joe-Tober

The Joe Hunt Group takes aim at the Lilypad.

Let’s think outside the box by listing The Blues Dream Box, which features some of my favorite experimental jazz scratchings on the electric guitar in the city. This is “Lower East Side” stuff, so it can shade off into noisy directions that the “supper club” jazz set can’t hang with. But you and me will love it. And is Clamb jazz? They’re “jazzy,” and that’s enough for me. Check out their fusion stew.

Clamb

Bass For Your Face

Clarinet waters run deep with Improbable Beasts at Midway Cafe.

Clamb: “Four Step Ascension”

A prog song that keeps it simple, if you can imagine such a thing.

Porterfield Returns

Porterfield returns to Boston for a Friday night of jazz-rock delight at Midway Cafe.

Clamb Comes Alive

On 26 August, 2022 the Midway Cafe hosted Clamb, Boston’s own earthmagik peacelords, for a night of mind-bottling krautjazz. City of Four and Lon opened.