Articles by Paul Rauch
Willie Jones III Sextet at Jazz Alley
by Paul Rauch
Willie Jones III Sextet Jazz Alley jny:Seattle, WA April 30, 2024 Arriving early to a club performance can give one perspective on what is about to take place. On a Tuesday evening in Seattle, with but a few patrons in the club among the hustle-and-bustle of house staff preparing for the evening, the set-up on stage was a prologue of the story that was to be told over a two-hour set. In particular, the drum ...
read moreMartin Budde: Back Burner
by Paul Rauch
The title of this debut recording from Seattle-based guitarist Martin Budde suggests the music has been percolating in the backwaters of his musical endeavors over the past few years. Indeed, that is the case, as the past five years have found Budde smack dab in the middle of the musical collective, Meridian Odyssey. The music was inspired by, and recorded during, the pandemic shutdown of 2020. This was a time when this collective of young Seattle musicians was sequestered in ...
read moreAnat Cohen Tentet at Jazz Alley
by Paul Rauch
Anat Cohen Tentet Jazz Alley Seattle, Washington February 27, 2024 The wonderfully diverse and swinging ten-piece ensemble led by clarinetist Anat Cohen doesn't have the opportunity to tour very often. Since the release of Happy Song (Anzic, 2017), the band's first release on the label that Cohen founded with partner Oded Lev Ari, the evolution of the band's recording and touring life has been interrupted by among other things, a worldwide pandemic. The ...
read moreJahari Stampley at Jazz Alley
by Paul Rauch
Jahari Stampley Jazz Alley jny: Seattle, WA January 30, 2024 There are certain immutable facts that present themselves to you when engaging with 2023 Herbie Hancock Institute International Competition winner, Jahari Stampley. First, he is a brilliant pianist, with prodigious talent and a commanding presence. Secondly, he is a large personality, with ardent ever-present positivity and a gracious spirit. And lastly, he is a young artist that brings with him more questions than answers ...
read moreRandy Napoleon: The Door is Open: The Music of Gregg Hill
by Paul Rauch
In and around the formidable jazz studies program at Michigan State University is a plethora of jazz talent devoted to instrumental and compositional excellence. Most of this talent is young, benefiting from a wide array of world-class instructors that includes program director Rodney Whitaker and veteran guitarist Randy Napoleon, among other notables. Within this labyrinth of jazz wisdom in the Detroit / Lansing metroplex is composer Gregg Hill, a former truck driver and tech entrepreneur whose performing ambitions were superseded ...
read moreDavid Ambrosio's Civil Disobedience: 50 Years in the Making
by Paul Rauch
Modern jazz has never been more prolific. Nonsense you say? With most recording and touring jazz musicians coming out of institutions of higher learning these days, jazz listeners can encounter top line players in virtually any major city in the United States. What's happening in New York is happening in Seattle, Denver, Detroit or Cleveland in scenes that vary in size but are nonetheless there. With the newest wave comes in-depth compositional skills, the likes of which have never been ...
read moreBill Anschell: Improbable Solutions
by Paul Rauch
Pianist and composer Bill Anschell has made his mark in jazz as a distinctive pianist with a notable body of work. His time in Atlanta, and his extensive residency in Seattle, has produced ten recordings as a leader or co-leader, and a well-deserved following on live dates with two distinctive trios, plus his “Rumbler" band. His previous two recordings define the past decade of his career, with Shifting Standards (Origin, 2018) bearing witness to his trio prowess with partners Jeff ...
read moreThe Heavy Hitters Live at Jazz Alley
by Paul Rauch
The Heavy Hitters Jazz Alley Seattle, Washington December 12, 2023 At first glance, this gig's title gives the impression of an all-star lineup of established players running through the changes of straight ahead standards in a friendly setting. There was some semblance of that, with the band boasting an assemblage of individual musicians that certainly can be on the road doing their own thing. But aside from a pair of standard ballads, this band ...
read moreJeremy Pelt Quintet at Jazz Alley
by Paul Rauch
Jeremy Pelt Quintet Jazz Alley Seattle, WA November 7, 2023 At forty seven years of age, trumpeter/composer Jeremy Pelt came of age as a musician in the mid-1990's as a young member of the Mingus Big Band. He benefited greatly during that time and in the years that followed, from the mentorship of his elders. This tradition that has sustained the music over the course of more than one hundred years, took the human form ...
read moreTrunino Lowe: The Vision
by Paul Rauch
You can try and look away. You can try to see the musician as a single entity that grew in the shadow of his native city's historic lineage. “Assess the young man's music on its own merits, without drawing comps to the past," would be the objective. But this was the trumpet, and the young man playing it was mentored by Detroit cats like Dwight Adams and Kris Johnson, which inevitably leads down the path of the iconic trumpeter and ...
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