Skelton Skinner All Stars / Clare Fischer Big Band / Ron Carter's Great Big Band
Skelton Skinner Allstars Big Band
Cookin' with the Lid On
Diving Duck Records
2012
Back in the late 1950s, vibraphonist Terry Gibbs (with some help from his friends) put together an ensemble that became known as the Terry Gibbs Dream Band, took up residence in Hollywood and began blowing audiences away at the ...
Skip Heller: Foolish Me
Skip Heller
Foolish Me
Weatherbird Records
2012
Fred “Skip" Heller is a hip musical polymath from Philadelphia, living on the West Coast, where he burns through musical styles like there is no definition. He has a major, and unapologetic, jones for John Hartford and Roger Miller and an encyclopedic knowledge of American music, ...
What's The Point, Part I
This is the first entry for my new column at All About Jazz. I actually published What's The Point? in my own blog in January 2012. All About Jazz asked if I would be interested in writing for them; I was surprised and honored. I decided to update and rewrite the original article; because of the ...
Tord Gustavsen Quartet: The Well
Tord Gustavsen Quartet
The Well
ECM Records
2012
Norwegian pianist Tord Gustavsen may not have attained the level of success, say, of a Keith Jarrett or Chick Corea with his 2003 ECM debut, Changing Places, but it clearly struck a popular chord, as well as garnering no shortage of critical acclaim. Subsequent touring ...
Fuel for the Ride!
Dear fellow contributor,
We're picking up where we left off in 2011, adding new features and making rapid improvements to the website. Though we're pushing full speed ahead on our technology, we need your help to keep the content flowing. Please read on for the details.
Index
1. Content Shortage
2. ...
Barry Harris: Village Vanguard, New York, January 25, 2012
Barry Harris
Village Vanguard
New York, NY
January 15, 2012
Ambling in from the back of the room, Barry Harris introduced his trio to the crowd at the Village Vanguard as the musicians filed in ahead of him: Ray Drummond on bass, Leroy Williams on drums, and then he announced, with a wink, ...
Ron Cole Trio: Vientiane, Laos, January 21, 2012
Ron Cole Trio
MarkTwo Pub and Restaurant
Vientiane, Laos
January 21, 2012
The fact that a jazz trio came from Bangkok to play a swish new venue in the Laotian capital--one that wouldn't look out of place in the City of Angels--says something about the rapid pace of change in Laos. This was ...
Sonny Rollins: Mark of Greatness
Making two trips to the White House within a calendar year, to receive two of the nation's most prestigious awards bestowed upon artists, is more than fairly momentous. Those are significant feathers in the ol' cap--surely reasons to crow or, at the very least, feel pretty satisfied about oneself.
So it had to be a hell ...
February 2012
Dear Mr. P.C.:
I'm pretty new as a jazz listener, but there's already something I don't get. People say jazz is supposed to be all about surprise. But I keep hearing this same formula: They play the melody, then the melody instrument takes a solo, then the piano solos, then the bass solos, and then sometimes ...
Kenny Burrell: Every Note Swings
Kenny Burrell has appeared on so many essential jazz recordings that jazz history and his story seem irretrievably intertwined. Billie Holiday's valedictory rumination Lady Sings the Blues (Verve, 1956)? Jimmy Smith's epochal funk throwdown Back at the Chicken Shack (Blue Note, 1960)? Tony Bennett's Carnegie Hall debut? Kenny Burrell played guitar for them all. Even Jimi ...
BAM or JAZZ: Part Two!
Jazz, an art form given birth in the United States by descendents of the formerly enslaved, has a complicated relationship with race. Although race, as a popular idea, has no basis in biology, many people mentally adhere to the idea of dividing groups of people based on “race" as opposed to understanding how groups of people ...
Bob Brookmeyer: Jack of All Trades, Master of Valves
Bob Brookmeyer, a Renaissance man among jazz musicians who died December 15, 2011, four days before his eighty-second birthday, will be remembered as many things: composer, arranger, musician, educator, outspoken arbiter who brooked no nonsense and wasn't shy about letting others know when he believed they were not giving the music he loved the best they ...
Take Five With Walter Ehresman
Meet Walter Ehresman:
Called “The quintessential Austin DIY artist" by famed disc jockey Charlie Martin (host of KOOP radio's Around the Town Sounds), Walter Ehresman has been a consistent, eccentric presence in the Austin music scene since the mid-'80s. A prolific songwriter and recording artist, he is equally at home presenting a delicate acoustic ...
The Rotten Apples: Beach Party at the Orchard
The Rotten Apples, “the tightest out-of-tune band in the world," had an antecedent in guitarist Keith Waters' Belmont High School band (Belmont is a town just north of Boston). Even that early evolutionary ancestor of the current band blew effortless attitude in the face of the powers that be. Waters remembers playing a party at the ...
