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Jazz Articles about E.J. Strickland
Lakecia Benjamin: Phoenix
by Angelo Leonardi
A dodici anni dal debutto funk di Retox e dopo il sentito omaggio a John e Alice Coltrane di tre anni fa (Pursuance: The Coltranes) la sassofonista newyorchese realizza il disco della prima maturità, dimostrando di saper padroneggiare le molte influenze assimilate dall'infanzia. Influenze che partono dalla musica latina che ascoltava nel quartiere di Washington Heights e attraversano la Black Music nella sua interezza, da Sly Stone, James Brown, Charlie Parker e i boppers fino a John Coltrane, Wayne Shorter ...
read moreJean-Paul Bourelly: Black Lives - From Generation to Generation
by Vic Albani
Doppio CD o doppio vinile prodotto in HI-Res e con packaging di lusso dalla Jammin'colorS, agenzia per artisti jazz, world, funk, alternativi, hip-hop, electro e sperimentali nonché etichetta indipendente. Il lavoro che ha pubblicato in tanta pompa magna è un ampio collage di musica nera realizzato da 25 musicisti africani, caraibici e afroamericani guidati dalla visione creativa di Stefany Calembert (compagna del bassista jazz Reggie Washington) e produttrice estemporanea dell'etichetta belga. A tutti è stato chiesto di comporre ...
read moreOleg Kireyev and Keith Javors: The Meeting
by Howard Mandel
How far must a reeds virtuoso from Bashkiria--a town in the Ural Mountains, southeast of Moscow towards Mongolia--and a pianist-composer-educator from southern Illinois, now living in Philadelphia, have to go to get together? Not very, based on the music Oleg Kireyev and Keith Javors arrive at on The Meeting. Simply to a shared sense of joy in swinging rhythms, warm, rich harmonies and singable songs. In their second co-led album Kireyev and Javors offer more delightful proof that ...
read moreLakecia Benjamin: Phoenix
by Jerome Wilson
The previous album by saxophonist Lakecia Benjamin, Pursuance: The Coltranes, (Ropeadope, 2020) was a multifaceted tribute to the music of both John Coltrane and Alice Coltrane. Her new album takes on societal and human issues with similar diversity but in a more compact and organized manner. It moves from a socially aware mix of soul, R'n'B, and jazz fusion in its first half to full-blown spiritual jazz in its second. The album begins with the sound of sirens ...
read moreLakecia Benjamin: Phoenix
by Mike Jurkovic
True to her nature, saxophonist Lakecia Benjamin keeps the flame to the dynamite on her smoking follow-up to the wildfire of Pursuance (Ropeadope, 2020), her still hot-to-the-touch dedication to the music and spirituality of John Coltrane and Alice Coltrane. Co-produced with maximum female power by Benjamin and Terri Lyne Carrington, the torrential riptide Amerikkan Skin" ambushes one's consciousness via the urgency of police sirens only to give way to the equally urgent dictum of radical thinker, activist, educator ...
read moreLynne Arriale Trio: The Lights Are Always On
by Jack Bowers
Music with a message" need not be inscrutable or bombastic, as pianist/composer Lynne Arriale proves time and again on The Lights Are Always On, whose ten original Arriale compositions are dedicated to caregivers, healers, truth-tellers and defenders of democracy in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic and the brazen hoax-fueled attack on the U.S. Capitol building on January 6, 2021. In fact, much of the music on Arriale's sixteenth album as leader is more understated than emphatic, ...
read moreVarious Artists: Black Lives - From Generation to Generation
by Glenn Astarita
Indeed, African Americans are the architects of several musical formations, hearkening back to Scott Joplin's development of 'ragged' rhythms i.e., Ragtime, along with blues, funk, jazz, and other genres, often evolving into various tangents and offshoots. And on this comprehensively entertaining set produced by Belgian Stefany Calembert with assistance from her husband and acclaimed bassist Reggie Washington, they righteously bestow Black Music as a source of moral truth and potent weapon against racism." Numerous stars such as saxophonist ...
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