Jazz Articles
Daily articles including interviews, profiles, live reviews, film reviews and more... all carefully curated by the All About Jazz staff. You can find more articles by searching our website, see what's trending on our popular articles page or read articles ahead of their published dates on our future articles page.
Will Calhoun: Celebrating Elvin Jones

by Dan Bilawsky
Properly paying tribute to a figure like the late Elvin Jones is about more than aping a style of drumming and referencing songs; it's about acknowledging a specific life force, how it fueled the music, and how it lives on in those who Jones influenced on the bandstand, in the studio, and through his recorded work. Drummer Will Calhoun hits the mark in all of those ways on Celebrating Elvin Jones. For Calhoun, Jones was both a ...
read moreWill Calhoun: Native Lands

by Brian P. Lonergan
On Native Lands, the electronics of drum programming and guitar loops mix convincingly with indigenous acoustic instruments from around the world. Will Calhoun is able to combine such seemingly disparate sounds, styles and even people into one landscape and still maintain the integrity of the album as a whole. It may be due to the unifying thread throughout, Calhoun's honest rhythmic experiments, as well as the varied cast joining the effort: Pharoah Sanders, Mos Def, Kevin Eubanks, Stanley Jordan, Orrin ...
read moreWill Calhoun: Live at the Blue Note

by Craig Jolley
Percussionist Calhoun has hired most of Bobby Watson's Horizon quintet, but this session is not a case of Watson uncomfortably grimacing as a sideman in his own band. For one thing Calhoun's band has a more modern feel. As might be expected Watson is the strongest soloist, but he limits his contributions to playing, and he is careful not to steal the show. He plays tenor (instead of his usual alto) on a couple of cuts, giving the band a ...
read moreWill Calhoun Quintet: Live At The Blue Note

by AAJ Staff
In a blending of genres that makes categorization irrelevant, drummer Will Calhoun, previously of Living Colour, has released his first CD as a leader of a jazz group. Recorded live at the Blue Note two days after Christmas in 1999, the Will Calhoun Quintet has a familiar ring for a previously unrecorded group. That's because saxophonist Bobby Watson teamed up with his trumpeter from Horizon, Terell Stafford, to create the front line.The signature Watson alto brightness, combined with ...
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