Jazz Articles about Howard Alden

The Bix Centennial All-Stars: Celebrating Bix!

by Nicholas F. Mondello
September 21, 2023

Cornetist Leon Bismark “Bix" Beiderbecke, while certainly heavily influenced by Louis Armstrong, developed his own highly stylized way of playing and improvising jazz. One wonders what musical highlights might have been accomplished had he lived beyond his 28 years. Celebrating Bix!, originally released in 2003 as a single CD album, adds selections which, due to size constraints, did not make the original release, but they all certainly “make it" here as a double CD and vinyl release. What ...

The Bix Centennial All Stars: Celebrating Bix!

by Jack Bowers
September 14, 2023

Here's a new album by the Bix Centennial All Stars honoring the legacy of the renowned cornetist Bix Beiderbecke. Sort of. Actually, most of the music on Celebrating Bix! was recorded and released in March 2003, the actual centenary of Beiderbecke's birth in Davenport, Iowa. This expanded twentieth anniversary edition includes a trio of songs not released at that time owing to limited space, and has been reissued on two CDs instead of one. Having said that, ...

Howard Alden - Andy Brown: Heavy Artillery

by Angelo Leonardi
May 14, 2014

Chi cerca indicazioni sulle nuove tendenze della chitarra jazz può anche cambiare pagina ma se volete deliziarvi con dell'ottimo straight-ahead jazz questo è il disco che fa per voi. La musica sa infatti coniugare perizia tecnica, feeling, gusto melodico, intenso drive e fantasia interpretativa. Protagonista dell'opera è un quartetto guidato da due chitarristi di generazioni diverse ma sostanzialmente affini nell'estetica, che richiama maestri come Tal Farlow, Barney Kessel e George van Eps: il 56enne Howard Alden e ...

Howard Alden / Ken Peplowski: Pow-Wow

by Andrew Velez
December 16, 2007

Whether you were fortunate enough or not to have caught Howard Alden and Ken Peplowski's 2007 reunion art New York's Bargemusic, Pow-Wow will do very nicely to dig these longtime musical good companions. Much of the Barge evening drew upon Pow-Wow, offering a perfect, quietly spectacular skyline setting for these two, both who eschew pyrotechnics. Their playing is exciting enough in its simplicity. Hearing their variety, range and richness can make it seem like listening to more than just two ...

Howard Alden/Bucky Pizzarelli: In a Mellow Tone

by Mitchell Seidel
July 25, 2004

Good taste never goes out of style and knows no demographic, as this delicate album by two masters of the seven-string demonstrates. The 45-year old Alden and the 77-year old Pizzarelli may be a generation apart, but they are certainly cut from the same cloth.

A great example of how their comping and strumming styles mesh so effortlessly is heard on “Tangerine," where they trade back and forth like one guitarist overdubbed on two tracks. “Cherokee" starts with a tom-tom-inspired ...

The Bix Beiderbecke Centennial All-Stars: Celebrating Bix!

by Jack Bowers
May 3, 2003

Cornetist Bix Beiderbecke, who considered himself a failure and died (primarily from alcohol abuse) in 1931 at age twenty-eight, would no doubt have been astonished to learn that a group of world- class musicians was assembling to record an album celebrating the hundredth anniversary of his birth. But if Bix was unable to recognize his own genius, others were--and now, seventy-two years onward, he rests comfortably in the pantheon raised to honor such legendary jazz pioneers as Louis Armstrong, King ...

Howard Alden: My Shining Hour

by Dave Nathan
July 1, 2002

There is a small, select group of contemporary jazz musicians who when they release a new album, the question is not whether it's going to be good but rather, “how good". Guitarist Howard Alden falls four square into this community of consummate jazz artists and his position in the group is further solidified by his latest from Concord Jazz, My Shining Hour. Playing the both the electric and acoustic 7 string archtop guitar, Alden gets a fullness, a richness of ...