Over the past dozen years, the New York-based label Relative Pitch has diligently promoted improvised music. Founded by Kevin Reilly and the late Mike Panico, the imprint boasts a roster of artists ...

One of the most puzzling aspects of the brain's faculty for music is perfect or absolute pitch, the ability to identify a note without any reference point. Only a few musicians have the skill. Most ...

In baseball it's called "small ball." That might be the best way to describe the improvising duo of saxophonist Ingrid Laubrock and drummer Tom Rainey. Small ball baseball teams win, not by home run ...

Researchers at the University of Rochester's Eastman School of Music and Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences have developed a unique test for perfect pitch, and have found surprising results.

The one-second squeak of an opening door produces several notes before settling somewhere around an F. Outside, a passing bus might sing in the key of C sharp. On a recent day at Au Bon Pain in New ...

Ed Douglas’s article on why some people have perfect pitch (26 February, p 46) makes a number of credible proposals but does not mention mirror neurons. When a musician with perfect pitch hears a note ...