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Roseanna Vitro: Listen Here
by C. Michael Bailey
Roseanna Vitro is a singer's singer in the same way as Sarah Vaughan and Carmen McRae. She is a studied practitioner of the jazz vocal arts, an interpreter, performer, educator. Her repertoire, taste, and vocal chops are beyond compare. Vitro's ability has evolved horizontally and vertically over 14 recordings and nearly 40 years. The singer's most recent release, Tell Me The Truth (Skyline, 2018), was thematically devoted to the rich music of the American South where Vitro capably migrates from ...
read moreThelonious Monk: Palo Alto
by Mike Jurkovic
Earth-shattering? The best live Thelonious Monk recording ever? Who knows? Probably not. But it is Monk, so Palo Alto, comes to us with all the scholarly fandom brouhaha we accord these wonderful little things that gratefully drop in our laps from troubled time to troubled time. For anyone not paying attention to the jazz chatter of late, the backstory to Palo Alto thumbnails broadly like this: It is 1968 which, as it just so happens, is another troubled ...
read moreAlice Coltrane: Live At The Berkeley Community Theater 1972
by Chris May
Conventional belief holds that Alice Coltrane was the dreamy, mellifluous partner in John Coltrane's late period, out-there sonic explorations. The truth is otherwise, as attentive listening to the recordings the two Coltranes made together in 1966 and 1967 demonstrates. The misapprehension stems from the gentler albums Alice made for Impulse in the first few years following her husband's passing. A Monastic Trio (1968), Huntington Ashram Monastery (1969), Ptah, The El Daoud (1970), Journey In Satchidananda (1971) and World Galaxy (1972) ...
read moreBen Riley's Monk Legacy
by Russ Musto
This interview was first published at All About Jazz on November 7, 2006. Ben Riley is one of the most richly experienced drummers in jazz today. The Georgia-born drummer came up in Harlem during the second wave of bebop in the fifties, playing with Randy Weston and others. He was at Minton's with saxophonist Eddie “Lockjaw" Davis and anchored the saxophonist's two-tenor quintet with Johnny Griffin, but his true claim to fame came during his years with iconoclast ...
read moreBen Riley: Grown Folks Music
by Raul d'Gama Rose
Ben Riley is best-described as a drummer who has always been the epitome of great taste, elegance and almost certainly possessed of a higher musical intelligence. There is no better recommendation for this than the fact that Thelonious Monk hired him as a drummer, but if further proof were requested , then all that needs doing would be to spin Grown Folks Music, this eloquently bluesy albeit seemingly short session with a rising star on the saxophone, Wayne Escoffery. The ...
read moreBen Riley's Monk Legacy Septet: Memories of T
by J Hunter
Thelonious Monk's place in jazz is quite intact. In addition to the archival efforts of his son, drummer T.S. Monk, plenty of players have overcome the intimidation factor that goes with tackling Monk's singular sound. The issue is not whether Monk covers appear with the same frequency as covers of Ellington or Armstrong; rather, it is whether these attempts follow Monk's lead, taking the music outside the box. Memories of T--the debut disc by Ben Riley's Monk Legacy Septet--serves up ...
read moreBen Riley with Thelonious Monk
by David A. Orthmann
Ben Riley began his four-year association with Thelonious Monk on a moment's notice, joining the It's Monk's Time recording session devoid of any previous playing experience in Monk's quartet, or even the benefit of a single rehearsal.* Riley thus stepped into the drum chair of one of the greatest working jazz bands of the mid-1960s and made his mark without any apparent signs of adjustment or strain. Already an experienced professional, having played in the bands of luminaries such as ...
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