Artist Profiles

Where most debut acts aim to make a statement, Eric Harland's first lead project, Voyager, is decidedly conversational. Harland, arguably the consummate jazz drummer of his generation, has staffed his quintet with a potent if precocious musical brain trust. The year after pianist Taylor Eigsti first played with pianist Dave Brubeck (he was 12 at the ...

Seventy years ago, the small village of Kommeno in Greece experienced a tragedy from which it has never really recovered. What happened there on August 16, 1943 was not unusual in the context of a war pursued by an enemy determined to stamp out all opposition. Other towns in Greece and its islands, such as Distomon ...

Composer-pianist, Mike Taylor, lies buried in a touchingly simple grave in a cemetery in Southend. His body was found on the beach at Leigh-on-Sea in Essex in January 1969. It was assumed that he had committed suicide. He was 30 years old and didn't leave much of a legacy--a couple of albums now highly prized, a ...

Pianist Matthew Shipp's artistic collaboration community is a counterpart to his business community. It is its own ecosystem of multidisciplinary work, scholarly conversations and mentorship. The Trio The trio is Shipp's main vehicle. It is, by turns, his midnight train, his slow boat to China and a way of flying home. It takes a hike, rides ...

Only about 10 minutes late for a lunchtime interview with saxophonist Greg Abate, driving up to the restaurant he's clearly visible, standing by the door looking at his watch and scanning the parking lot with a slightly anxious expression on his face. Unlike some of the other famous and infamous players of bebop and jazz, Abate ...

[Editor's Note: On Sunday, November 25, 2012, All About Jazz learned that Marcus Miller sustained non-life-threatening injuries during a bus crash on the A2 highway in central Switzerland. Unfortunately, the driver was killed in the accident. Online sources report that the bus was carrying 13 people, including two drivers and the 11 members Miller's band. The ...

A young rocker out and about in Los Angeles at 10 am may be an odd sighting, akin perhaps to seeing a polar bear in the sweaty Congo, but nevertheless here is 25 year old Nick Waterhouse, approaching a downtown diner on a sunny weekday morning to discuss his new album, Time's All Gone (Innovative Leisure, ...

Few musicians have developed successful careers in jazz playing just flute. You might think of Herbie Mann, Hubert Laws and Bobbi Humphrey, but only Jeremy Steig, Paul Horn and James Newton spring immediately to mind as artists who have achieved credibility with both fans and critics in their work. We can now add 36 year-old British ...

Saying that Bruce Kaminsky is, after almost 40 years, among the most sought-after bassists on the eastern US coast doesn't even begin to tell the whole story. Or saga, if you will. He maintains that being a musician is synonymous with being an entrepreneur. In line with that, his entrepreneurial activities have focused on the invention ...

"Jack's formal education has given him useful tools but above all he has drive and determination and ideas, which cannot be taught."

--Colin Towns, composer, bandleaderand producer of The Jack Davies Big Band (V&V, 2012).

The jazz big band is a wondrous beast. Caught in movement and it's like a big cat, with ...

[ Editor's Note: This 2005 article was reprinted in memory of Byard Lancaster who died on August 23, 2012. ] “From A Love Supreme to The Sex Machine" is reedman Byard Lancaster's personal aesthetic mantra, something that recalls the theme of the Charles Moffett tune “Avant-garde Got Soul Too."

Free jazz and creative improvisation historically have ...

Pianist Matthew Shipp is very keenly attuned to the details and nuances of what has to be the most forlorn and anemic environment imaginable for anything a sensible person would call business. Think of it as the sort of business ecosystem that resembles the least habitable places on earth, say a fumarole at the bottom of ...

Beauty is perhaps one of the most common words used in association with music, but it is also one of the vaguest terms in musical criticism, and it rarely says something substantial about the work that is described. And yet, despite its intangible character, it would be almost impossible to characterize Danish guitarist Jakob Bro's music ...

It almost seems as if there's no other place on earth like it. New Zealand is truly breathtaking, with its diverse geography of mountains, beaches, green plains and forests forming a complex triptych where different strains of nature melt into a sublime scenario. And then there there's the water, the ever-flowing source of life, finding its ...