Jazz Articles about Billy Fox

Billy Fox's Backbirds & Bullets: Dulces

by Jack Huntley
September 27, 2011

In the liner notes for Dulces, Billy Fox outlines the influence that Bengali writer, artist and composer Rabindranath Tagore had on his own compositional insights, writing “Tagore boldly defied the expectations of each idiom." And after listening to Dulces, it is apparent that Fox learned well. Like his mentor, Fox is able to use various musical idioms as powerful touchstones without lapsing into empty compositional rhetoric. Instead, Fox harnesses the energy and beauty of multiple dialects that culminates in an ...

Billy Fox: Kaidan Suite

by Budd Kopman
July 23, 2008

Billy Fox is primarily a composer, although he does play various percussion instruments on both his fine previous release The Uncle Wiggly Suite (Clean Feed, 2007) and Kaidan Suite. He approaches composition eclectically, but there is a decided classical undertone. Note that both recordings are suites, and thus are integrated works, meant to be listened to from beginning to end. Within the composed structure however, he allows much freedom for improvisation, regardless of whether it is of the classical or ...

Jazzanese: Kitsune & Kioku

by Celeste Sunderland
December 8, 2007

Billy Fox Kitsune Ensemble Kaidan Suite Gozen Reiji Records 2007 Kioku Both Far and Near Quiet Design 2007

Two recent albums combine American and Japanese mentalities. Billy Fox' Kaidan Suite follows the form of Hyakumonogatari Kaidankai, an Edo period exercise, where participants tell tales that gradually increase in fright, by candlelight. ...

Billy Fox: The Uncle Wiggly Suite

by Budd Kopman
June 9, 2007

In the notes to The Uncle Wiggly Suite, composer Billy Fox tells the story of the genesis of the thematic kernel that makes up the connecting thread that runs through the pieces in this suite. This fine music lives in cracks between many things: composition vs. improvisation, accessibility vs. pure expression, mainstream vs. avant-garde, consciousness vs. the unconscious and the rational vs. the irrational. Taking a compositional technique suggestion to the extreme, Fox recorded himself noodling at ...

Take Five With Billy Fox

by AAJ Staff
April 16, 2007

Meet Billy Fox: Originally trained as a drummer and Latin percussionist, my focus today is composing. My music interweaves composition and improvisation, and draws from a variety of styles: modal and free jazz; Western classical; and Japanese tonal systems.Instrument(s): Composition.Teachers and/or influences? My primary influence as a composer has been Jane Ira Bloom, but I've also benefited from mentors such as Bobby Sanabria, George Delgado, and Richard Boukas. Colleagues Paul Faatz and Ivan Navas have also ...