Jazz Articles about Greg Kelley

Greg Kelley: Flesh to Metal

by Gordon Marshall
April 21, 2010

Boston trumpeter Greg Kelley takes an atom and constructs a world out of it. Taking his cue from the metallic tubes of his instrument and how they are connected to his mouth, and ultimately his body, his sounds are never wholly disembodied but rather maintain the precise quality of that apparatus that, in his hands, is a physical/technological continuum.

Or something--efforts to characterize his art are bound to fail, turning back on themselves with the fatal realization that the only ...

A Fireside Chat With Greg Kelley

by AAJ Staff
February 23, 2003

If the music is to move forward, it will move forward on the wings of warriors like Greg Kelley. Kelley is not a trend or a term or a magazine cover. Kelley is however, a player and I dig players. Kelley's trumpet is not for everyone. But neither was Ayler and neither is Braxton. But that doesn't take away from his ability to challenge the listener, convention, and stretch the envelope. If you have never heard of Kelley, allow me ...

Greg Kelley: If I Never Meet You In This Life, Let Me feel The Lack

by Glenn Astarita
February 4, 2003

Trumpeter Greg Kelley is known for his modernistic excursions within various improvisational circles. With this solo outing, the artist does not rummage through anything that adheres to the straight, narrow or even free-jazz zones. This, my friends is an entirely different ball of wax. Here, Kelley explores the guts of his horn via multiphonics, upper register hissing sounds and otherworldly tonalities. Curiously strange yet undeniably fascinating, Kelley intermixes dark, ambient tones with mechanistic phrasings. At times, he conjures up effects ...

Greg Kelley: Trumpet

by Derek Taylor
November 1, 2000

One of the most useful and elementary devices available to critics is the comparison of a given musical work to what has come before. But what if the music in question has no precedent in the critic’s knowledge base? The closest referent I can come up with for Trumpet is Side Two of Sun Ra’s My Brother the Wind, Volume 2, but even this correlation is hopelessly deficient. On that record Ra experimented with the myriad sounds attainable through the ...