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Victor "Red" Atkins

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VICTOR "RED" ATKINS

Place of Birth: Selma, Alabama

Selma native and pianist Victor "Red" Atkins left the Manhattan School of Music one semester shy of completing his Master's Degree in Jazz Performance. After recording Delfeayo Marsalis' "Pontius Pilate's Decision," he had to make a decision: continue his formal education or pursue a career as a professional musician. Music won and before long the pianist was jet-setting around the Americas and Europe with Elvin Jones, Mark Whitfield, Nnenna Freelon and Leroy Jones.

He has been documented on CDs with Joshua Redman along with Wynton and Bradford Marsalis. Atkins has appeared on "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno," "Good Morning America" and Black Entertainment Television's "Jazz Notes," and he has worked with such artists as Nicholas Payton, Donald Harrison and Ray Anderson. He served as an adjunct professor for Ellis Marsalis at the University of New Orleans, and is now on full time faculty there.

He was inducted into the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame in 1998.

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Reassessing

Spodie's Back

Read "Spodie's Back" reviewed by Jim Trageser


Still a teenager when signed to Quincy Jones' Warner Bros. subsidiary, Qwest, trumpeter Derrick Shezbie was nonetheless a veteran on this debut as leader--having been playing in the traditionalist Rebirth Brass Band for several years already. Produced by fellow Crescent City native Delfeayo Marsalis, “Spodie's Back" is a much more modernistic outing than anything he would have tackled in Rebirth. But unlike the throwback neo-bop so popular with other young jazz lions in the 1990s, this is more ...

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