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Jazz Articles about Steve Johns

16
Album Review

Peter Hand: Blue Topaz

Read "Blue Topaz" reviewed by Jack Bowers


Peter Hand has a hand in almost everything on Blue Topaz, playing masterful guitar, writing seven of the album's ten engaging numbers and arranging all of them. He also spliced together a pair of blue-chip ensembles for his first small-group recording after three well-received big-band albums, and invited his longtime friend--and legendary tenor saxophonist--Houston Person to sit in on two tracks. Person had also guested on one of the guitarist's big-band recordings, Out of Hand (2014). Hand's ...

8
Album Review

David Janeway: Interchange

Read "Interchange" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan


Unearthing and releasing old music--even sounds sourced from decades old tapes--has become common in jazz. Pianist Bill Evans (thank you. Zev Feldman) has enjoyed something of a twenty-first-century renaissance. Pianist Fred Hersch released @ The Village Vanguard (Palmetto Records, 2018), recorded in 1997; and 2021 saw the posthumous release from pianist Masabumi Kikuchi, Hanamichi (Red Hook), recorded in 2013. Pianist David Janeway has been on the scene since the late 70s; he offered up the marvelous Distant Voices ...

2
Album Review

Meredith d'Ambrosio: Sometime Ago

Read "Sometime Ago" reviewed by Angelo Leonardi


Dopo dieci anni di silenzio discografico è un gran piacere ascoltare un nuovo album della cantante di Boston, il diciassettesimo per la Sunnyside, con cui pubblica dalla metà degli anni ottanta, qualche anno dopo il suo debutto. Più che cantante Meredith preferisce definirsi “song stylist" e tale resta all'età di 81 anni, senza perdere un grammo di classe interpretativa e pregevole essenzialità. Con l'età il timbro s'è irrobustito, conferendo nuove ombreggiature al suo eloquio ma intonazione e ...

29
Album Review

Eric Goletz: Standard-ized!

Read "Standard-ized!" reviewed by Jack Bowers


If variety is on your wish list, you will find a lot to like on Standard-ized!, New York-based trombonist Eric Goletz's third album in three years. Group size and makeup are seldom the same, Goletz's charts traverse new realms, there are special guests to enhance the proceedings, and Goletz even enlists a six-piece string “orchestra" on several numbers. The strings accompany one of the guests, vocalist LaJuan Carter, on the Nat King Cole chart-topper, “Nature Boy," and ...

2
Album Review

Eric Goletz: A New Light

Read "A New Light" reviewed by Richard J Salvucci


Eric Goletz is a virtuoso trombonist who also writes and arranges. On first hearing, his core band may put some in mind of Chase, Bill Chase's high-flying group that featured both vocals and technically demanding trumpet. Goletz has something similar going on. The music opens with “Prelude: Before the Light" and “A New Light," with a stinging solo by guitarist Henry Heinitsch. Goletz, it may be observed, is the logical outcome of jazz-rock and funk meets brass ...

28
Album Review

Eric Goletz: A New Light

Read "A New Light" reviewed by Jack Bowers


Trombonist Eric Goletz, an in-demand studio musician and sideman in New York City for three decades, released his first album as leader of his own ensemble in March 2021, and quickly followed with the second, A New Light, wherein his core octet is bolstered by three trumpets, half a dozen horns and a five-member string section. Among his more well-known teammates are trumpeter Randy Brecker, pianist Jim Ridl, keyboardist Allen Farnham and drummer Steve Johns. Goletz' musical ...

14
Album Review

Ray Blue: Work

Read "Work" reviewed by Edward Blanco


New York-based and bred, tenor saxophonist Ray Blue is no novice but a veteran player who has not received the accolades he so deserves. Perhaps after laying down and documenting an incredible volume of music on Work, the spotlight will shine a little brighter on this unheralded player. A composer and educator, as well as one of the most in-demand musicians in New York, Blue is a soulful performer, a full-throated sax man with a fluid and lyrical style which ...


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