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.
Michael Benedict & Bopitude featuring Gary Smulyan: Five and One

by C. Michael Bailey
Diamond hard bop is alive and well and living in Michael Benedict & Bopitude's studio. The quintet's debut, Michael Benedict & Bopitude (Planet Arts, 2011), established the group as a premiere hard bop unit employing the classic trumpet-tenor quintet format used by Miles Davis, Art Blakey and various others. For this edition of Bopitude, drummer Benedict adds baritone saxophonist Gary Smulyan, whose Smul's Paradise (Capri Records, 2012) made its own hard bop waves. The pairing is an opportune one.
read more