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Jazz Articles about T.K. Blue
T.K. Blue: The Tide of Love
by Pierre Giroux
T.K. Blue is an artist who is proficient on both the alto saxophone and flute; he has released a striking album entitled The Tide of Love that offers a diverse and engaging musical journey through various genres of the jazz spectrum. In this session, he is accompanied by several superb musicians, including Grammy-nominated Stefon Harris on vibes, along with pianist James Weidman, bassist Gavin Fallow, drummer Lenny Robinson and guitarist Ron Jackson. The group recorded an album of creativity, originality, ...
read moreCelebrating Randy Weston: An Evening with T.K. Blue and the African Rhythms Alumni Quartet at Dizzy's
by Dave Kaufman
Randy Weston passed away at the age of 92 in September 2018, leaving an indelible mark on the jazz community. Just weeks prior to his transition, he had given a performance at the Nice Jazz Festival and was in fine form. Weston enjoyed many accolades in the last chapter of his life including being recognized as an NEA Jazz Master and receiving a prestigious Doris Duke award. He was a noted composer, contributing many jazz classics to the jazz pantheon, ...
read moreSanti Debriano & Arkestra Bembe: Ashanti
by Jack Bowers
Panama-born bassist Santi Debriano's Arkestra Bembe is a nonet whose centerpiece is the bembe music of west Africa. During the Coronavirus pandemic, Debriano began hosting weekly bembes (musical celebrations) in the basement of his Staten Island, New York home, gradually assembling a group of musicians who would comprise the Arkestra and perform Debriano's compositions and arrangements. The result is Ashanti, an impressive studio recording whose framework is jazz but whose heart and soul are clearly in bembe. ...
read moreT.K. Blue: A Warm Embrace
by Hrayr Attarian
Saxophonist and flutist T.K Blue's tenth album A Warm Embrace is an enchanting and elegant work with richly textured harmonies and captivating melodies. Even though not all of the tracks are strictly speaking ballads there is a sublime sense of poetry that runs throughout the record and is its prevailing and cohesive motif.The solemn “Requiem for a Loved I" dedicated to several deceased musicians is intensely, yet quietly, lyrical and somber. It opens with a pensive and melancholic ...
read moreT.K. Blue: A Warm Embrace
by Dan Bilawsky
What do you do after you've already toured the world with jazz legends, helmed a successful college jazz program and recorded everything from bluesy fare to world-meets-jazz music to Latin-ized takes on Charlie Parker? If you're saxophonist T.K. Blue, you turn to the soft(er) and the subtle, delivering an album that's texturally rich yet wholly transparent. Blue, best known as a longtime sideman and musical director for pianist Randy Weston, has done all of the above and ...
read moreT.K. Blue: Latin Bird
by Chris M. Slawecki
Saxophonist Charlie “Bird" Parker is primarily remembered as an incendiary, revolutionary, improvisatory soloist, but he often expressed his style through composition, and many of Parker's original tunes became part of the modern jazz canon. Latin Bird, saxophonist T.K. Blue's label debut for Motema, his ninth release as a leader, reworks eight of Parker's tunes in Afro-Cuban, Brazilian, Caribbean and related rhythmic styles.Blue serves as musical director for pianist Randy Weston, with whom he's played for more than three ...
read moreT.K. Blue: Latin Bird
by C. Michael Bailey
New York City native TK (Talib Kibwe) Blue has seven previously released CDs to his leadership credit. His eighth, Latin Bird, bears promise as his most integrated and well-conceived. Blue interprets nine pieces composed by or closely associated with Charlie Parker's Latin muse. “Chi Chi" and “Si Si" were givens, the former enjoying both Blue's alto saxophone and flute playing over Parker's circuitous lines. Steve Turré demonstrates, on “Chi Chi," what a raving master of the creamiest trombone tone he ...
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