Articles by Ollie Bivens

Rez Abbasi: Snake Charmer

by Ollie Bivens
May 14, 2006

Los Angeles-raised and New York-resident guitarist Rez Abbasi states that “with my music I want to hold onto the the traditional aspects of each form (Indian music and jazz) and unite the best elements of both." The guitarist demonstrates prodigious chops throughout his fourth album, Snake Charmer, an eight-song, sixty-minute journey into jazz-rock fusion, grounded in Indian rhythms and ragas.

Typical throughout, as on the title track, the fleet-fingered Abbasi dances around the propulsive rock-like grooves of drummer Danny Weiss, ...

Don Cherry: Where Is Brooklyn?

by Ollie Bivens
May 13, 2006

With the reissue of Where Is Brooklyn?, Blue Note completes a trilogy of Don Cherry releases (also including Complete Communion and Symphony for Improvisers) which up to now had only been available on CD in a limited edition Mosaic box set. Cherry initially came into wide prominence in jazz as a member of Ornette Coleman's landmark 1959-61 quartet.

Where Is Brooklyn features bassist Henry Grimes, drummer Ed Blackwell and tenor titan Pharoah Sanders. The five selections have no themes or ...

Hamid Drake & Bindu: Bindu

by Ollie Bivens
April 30, 2006

Because jazz is rooted in improvisation, it can readily incorporate other musical genres and instruments. Especially since the '80s and the emergence of so-called world music, sounds and instruments from Asia, Africa and Latin America have found a welcome home in the music. Percussionist Hamid Drake has been among those at the forefront of this fusion.

Bindu (a term in yoga that means prayer) is a mixture of jazz with Middle Eastern, African and Indian musics. The thirteen-minute “Remembering Rituals," ...

Ernie Andrews: This is Ernie Andrews

by Ollie Bivens
April 29, 2006

Philadelphia-born singer Ernie Andrews has made Los Angeles his home for 60 of his 77 years, in the process becoming a legend among local jazz and blues fans by consistently presenting one of the best live performances in town. Die-hard fans of the blues/jazz singer will most appreciate Verve's new reissue of this album, first recorded in '64 for Dot Records.

Andrews is at his finest when delivering songs that tell a story and tunes which are heavily steeped in ...

David Murray 4tet & Strings: Waltz Again

by Ollie Bivens
March 29, 2006

Saxophonist David Murray is arguably the most recorded jazz musician in history. In the last ten years alone he has released over thirty albums. During the course of his thirty-year career, Murray has played bebop, Latin jazz, swing, world music and free jazz, performing in almost every configuration imaginable--solo, duo, trio, quartet, quintet, octet and big band.

Waltz Again is a strings project with a Murray twist: a quartet with familiar associates (Hamid Drake, Jaribu Shahid, Lafayette Gilchrist) plus a ...

Mark Sowlakis: Sinfonetta

by Ollie Bivens
March 28, 2006

Bay Area-resident clarinetist, composer and arranger Mark Sowlakis' Sinfonetta is a rich amalgam of two genres that have not always found common ground in the past--jazz and classical music. Because Sowlakis is so thoroughly trained in both fields, the project comes off almost without a hitch. He plays with some of New York's best, if underrecorded musicians, including fellow clarinetist Perry Robinson, pianist Frank Kimbrough, and Ed and George Schuller (bass and drums respectively).

Among the strongest tracks on Sinfonetta ...

Corpulent: Wolfwalk

by Ollie Bivens
January 26, 2006

Although jazz comprises no more than 4% of CD sales nationally, there exists a cornucopia of good to excellent jazz musicians--female vocalists, pianists, and saxophonists especially. You can put 44-year-old Baltimore native Gary Thomas in the “excellent" column. Having played with trumpeters Miles Davis and Wallace Roney, Thomas is currently the Director of Jazz Studies at the prestigious Peabody Conservatory of Music at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. At the time of the Wolfwalk recording in June of last ...

Don Cherry: Symphony for Improvisers

by Ollie Bivens
January 19, 2006

Exploding on the jazz scene in the late '50s as a member of Ornette Coleman's pioneering band, Don Cherry left the Coleman aggregation in '65 to pursue a solo career. This, his fifth date as a leader and his second album on Blue Note, was a continuation of the free jazz sonic explorations that made the Coleman band so groundbreaking. The thirty-year-old cornet and pocket trumpet player was beginning to step out from the long shadow of the controversial saxophonist. ...

Kenny Barron Trio: The Perfect Set: Live at Bradley's II

by Ollie Bivens
January 19, 2006

From the '60s through the '80s, pianist Kenny Barron was one of the most sought-after sidemen in jazz, playing with Dizzy Gillespie, Freddie Hubbard, Yusef Lateef, and Ron Carter, along with being a co-founder of the group Sphere, dedicated to performing the music of Thelonious Monk. Since the early '70s, Barron has put out several albums as leader. However, a series of live dates recorded with Stan Getz for four years up until the tenor's death in '91 brought Barron ...

Henry Franklin: All God's Children

by Ollie Bivens
November 30, 2005

Los Angeles native son bassist Henry “The Skipper" Franklin is perhaps best known for his association with the albums released by the short-lived but influential Black Jazz record label out of Philadelphia in the '70s. He has also played with Freddie Hubbard, Archie Shepp, and the late Horace Tapscott. His new album on his own label is a continuation of a strand of jazz music that arose in the mid to late '60s. Characterized by modal music ...