Ron Carter

The Tiny Desk is working from home for the foreseeable future. Introducing NPR Music’s Tiny Desk (home) concerts, bringing you performances from across the country and the world. It’s the same spirit — stripped-down sets, an intimate setting — just a different space. The velvety sapphire...

Some of the words that came to mind over and over again when I visited the new Deana Lawson exhibition at MoMA PS1 in Long Island City were "majesty" and "dignity". Lawson was born in Rochester, New York, in 1979, and her work focuses primarily on rejecting and subverting conventional modes of Black representation through photography. The MoMA PS1 show, Lawson’s first-ever solo museum exhibition, just arrived from the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston.

In a career that spans over five decades, Ron Carter has played jazz, classical, soul and hip-hop. He's won three Grammys. Ron's worked with folks like Miles Davis, Alice Coltrane, Aretha Franklin, Herbie Hancock, Billy Joel and A Tribe Called Quest. Take his contributions on It's Compared to What by...

Ron Carter is one of the most prolific and influential bassists in jazz history. During his six-decade career, he has recorded more than 2,000 records, and he has no plan on slowing down. "Age has not made me think slower," Carter says. And it's not made me refuse gigs. What...

Walk into any record store, head to the jazz section and pull out an album at random (or tune into your favorite jazz public radio station) — there is a very good chance that NEA Jazz Master Ron Carter appears on whicever recording you end up listening to. Carter is the most-recorded jazz bassist, as officially certified by Guinness, and over the course of 2,200 albums and counting — from his tracks with Miles Davis in the 1960s to his album with Jack DeJohnette and Gonzalo Rubalcaba, which won a Grammy in 2022 — Carter's discography reads like a definitive history of jazz. His chameleonic command of musical situations paired with his technical chops have made him a first-call bassist since he first landed on the scene, as well as outside of it. Records with the likes of Aretha Franklin, Paul Simon and A Tribe Called Quest further illustrate Carter's reach.

The Tiny Desk is working from home for the foreseeable future. Introducing NPR Music's Tiny Desk (home) concerts, bringing you performances from across the country and the world. It's the same spirit — stripped-down sets, an intimate setting — just a different space. The velvety sapphire of what...

Ron Carter delivered a Tiny Desk (Home) Concert, which NPR Music shared on the legendary jazz bassist’s 85th birthday today. Carter offered his Tiny Desk from the famed Blue Note jazz club in New York City. Backed by pianist Donald Vega and guitarist Russell Malone, Carter — who holds...

In his 1989 autobiography, the legendary jazz trumpeter and composer Miles Davis recalled meeting an aspiring bassist named Ron Carter in 1958 in Rochester, New York, where Carter was studying at the Eastman School of Music. Both jazz musicians had a mutual acquaintance in Paul Chambers, who played bass for Davis' first great quintet at the time. “Paul had already told me Ron was a [expletive] of a bass player,” Davis wrote. “So when Paul was about to leave and I heard Ron was playing, I went to check him out and loved what he was doing. So I asked him if he would join the band.”