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Jazz Articles about Wayne Escoffery
About Wayne Escoffery
Instrument: Saxophone, tenor
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by Dave Linn
Wayne Escoffery was born in London and raised in New Haven, Connecticut. He began playing the saxophone at the age of 11, later studying at the Educational Center for the Arts in New Haven and the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston. In the late 1990s, Escoffery started gaining recognition on the jazz scene with his tenure in the Eric Reed Septet and later joining the Mingus Big Band. After completing his studies, Escoffery moved to New ...
read moreWayne Escoffery: Still Forging Ahead
by R.J. DeLuke
Saxophonist Wayne Escoffery has a long, ongoing association with the Mingus Big Band organization, including a Grammy for Mingus Big Band Live at Jazz Standard (Jazz Workshop, Inc., Sue Mingus Music, 2010). His career also includes a special relationship with trumpeter Tom Harrell, with whom he has played for many years. All that is enough to carry a strong career. But Escoffery is more than that. His career is multifaceted, documented by his own bands and CDs. He's ...
read moreTom Harrell: Number Five
by John Kelman
"If it ain't broke, don't fix it," they say, and since coming to HighNote in 2007, trumpeter Tom Harrell has lived by that old adage, utilizing the same quintet for its auspicious debut, Light On, and three subsequent recordings, culminating in 2011's outstanding Time of the Sun. Number Five continues Harrell's winning streak with the same line-up, but if each successive recording has reflected the ongoing growth of one of today's most compelling small groups--the chemistry deeper and the interaction ...
read moreSteve Davis: Correlations
by C. Andrew Hovan
Surely it must be considered a milestone to chalk up Correlations as Steve Davis' 20th session as a leader. Just contemplate how much the world has changed since the trombonist started turning heads as a member of Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers back at the start of the '90s. The record business in particular occupies a vastly different landscape than was once the norm, a fact that figures all the more prominently in the precarious nature of recorded jazz. As such, ...
read moreAmina Figarova: Joy
by Dan McClenaghan
Pianist Amina Figarova released an album in 2005 that was about as far away from the theme of joy" as could be. September Suite (Munich Records) explored the deadly events of September 11, 2001 (she was in New York at the time; she experienced it). It is an album that she called: An Ode to Mourning striving to articulate the various stages of grief in musical terms." In 2022 Figarova turns 180 degrees to embrace optimism and a ...
read morePat Bianchi: Something to Say: The Music of Stevie Wonder
by Victor L. Schermer
This album is a tribute to Stevie Wonder, who beyond his popularity and fame has always been a an exceptional musician. It features four superb musicians, an organ trio consisting of Pat Bianchi on Hammond B-3 organ, Paul Bollenback on guitar, and Byron Landham on drums, with Wayne Escoffery as guest tenor saxophonist that honors Wonder's work with artistry and attention to his unique style. It synthesizes the jazz swing idiom with R&B/ soul music, both of which inspired Wonder ...
read morePat Bianchi: Something to Say: The Music of Stevie Wonder
by Jack Bowers
When considering pop artists whose music might readily lend itself to a jazz milieu, Stevie Wonder's name isn't one that springs readily to mind. Organist Pat Bianchi, however, felt that Wonder had Something to Say in a jazz context, so he set about canvassing Wonder's art and reimagining it in terms of an organ trio, accentuating the composer's singular gift for melody and harmony and replacing the lyrics with solos by organ, guitar and (in two instances) tenor saxophone.
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