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Jazz Articles about Darek Oles
Alan Pasqua, Peter Erskine, Darek Oles: Live In Italy
by Jim Worsley
Pianist Alan Pasqua and drummer Peter Erskine have been playing together for over fifty years now. For over twenty years Darek Oles has completed the trio on double bass. While brilliant upper-echelon musicians in their own right, the magic that ensues in this trio is remarkable. Could playing together for so long, performing thousands of shows over the years lead to burnout or it becoming “old hat?" Not for these three true jazz cats. The conversations just get deeper, their ...
read moreChris Standring: Wonderful World
by Richard J Salvucci
Many years ago, there was a radio station, WJBR, broadcasting from Wilmington, Delaware. The call sign stood for Just Beautiful Radio and that was precisely what you got. No-one called it easy listening or anything like that--it was the early 1960s--but listeners got a predictable dose of Percy Faith, Ray Conniff, Frank Chacksfield, nothing too challenging. The announcers had a predictable style as well—modulated, mellow, reassuring. In those days, with the possibility of nuclear war never far from anyone's mind, ...
read moreChris Standring: Wonderful World
by Pierre Giroux
Chris Standring is a Los Angeles-based contemporary jazz guitarist who was originally raised in Buckinghamshire, England. He has always had an itch to record an album of standards and that was scratched with the release of Wonderful World . Through the marvels of technology, Standring was able to record the trio tracks in several locations in California with some bold face names such as Peter Erskine, Chuck Berghofer and Randy Brecker, while the orchestral input was arranged and conducted by ...
read moreChris Standring: Wonderful World
by Jack Bowers
Wonderful World, the fourteenth album as leader by British guitarist Chris Standring, was no doubt recorded with the best of intentions. And make no mistake, the music is warm and lovely, furnishing an opulent showcase for Standring's mellow guitar. Aside from that, however, there's not a whole lot to say. Standring's “orchestra" consists of a nineteen-member string section, while Geoff Gascoyne's syrupy arrangements call to mind popular string-laden sessions from the 1950s and '60s, “easy listening" albums for “late-night lovers" ...
read moreL.A. Jazz Quartet: Live at The Baked Potato
by Jim Worsley
The Baked Potato in Studio City (Los Angeles) is an iconic little jazz club that has been serving it up hot, both live music and scrumptious baked potatoes, for a half century now. The intimate space has played host to a long and impressive list of jazz elites. With a pre-pandemic capacity of not much more than seventy-five people, the BP recently reopened with a maximum of just twenty patrons inside! It amounts to a private show. For the record, ...
read moreJeff Ellwood: The Sounds Around The House
by Pierre Giroux
As a professional musician hoping to have a meaningful career, hiding one's light under a bushel, may not be the best way to recognizable success. Such might be the case for tenor saxophonist Jeff Ellwood. He may have fallen into the trap evinced by the Dave Frishberg ditty “I Want To Be A Sideman." But as the saying goes; “better late than never" as Ellwood released a self-produced debut, The Sounds Around The House. ...
read morePeter Erskine / Bob Mintzer / Darek Oles / Alan Pasqua: Standards 2, Movie Music
by Edward Blanco
Standards hold a particular fascination for drummer Peter Erskine, as initiated through his Grammy-nominated Standards(Fuzzy Music, 2008). Unlike that first album--comprised primarily of old jazz standards--Standards 2, Movie Music focuses on songs that are considered standards from the realm of Hollywood movies. Featuring music from Gone With The Wind (1939), considered by many to be one of the best movies ever made, to the main theme from Rosemary's Baby (1968), this unusual collection of songs, by necessity, has to leave ...
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