Jazz Articles

Brooklyn Sax Quartet: Far Side of Here

by Aaron Rogers
February 11, 2006

Avant-garde jazz groups can sometimes sound too remote or off-the-wall, even to a hard-core jazz fan. When free jazz musicians play without bass, piano or drums, the music can have a tendency to lose its sense of structure when it comes to harmony and rhythm.

Although the Brooklyn Sax Quartet can be labeled as a free jazz group without a rhythm section, the group plays the “new thing" (as it was called in the early '60s by pioneers like Ornette ...

Brooklyn Sax Quartet: Far Side of Here

by Terrell Kent Holmes
May 7, 2005

The vibrancy and emotion of the Brooklyn Sax Quartet underscores its social conscience. This inventive group puts together a program that embraces multiculturalism and acknowledges the struggle against injustice without proselytizing. At a recent March show at St. John's Lutheran Church in Brooklyn, the Brooklyn Sax Quartet performed several numbers from Far Side of Here, whose splendid solo/group interplay recalls the dynamics of a Greek chorus. On the opener, “Tie Me Sufre (TEEay may SOOfray), altoist Rudresh Mahanthappa ...