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Billy Hart & The WDR Big Band: The Broader Picture
by Dan Bilawsky
A great teacher's influence can be unusually powerful and completely unbound, fixed to specific moments and lessons in a student's mind while also reverberating through time and space. You simply never know where it may lead, what doors it may unlock, or what wonders and worlds it may help to create. That's the subtext in the story behind this engrossing and brilliant affair. Back in 1992, Christophe Schweizer was a promising student at the Mannes College of ...
read moreThe Billy Hart Quartet at the 21c Museum Hotel
by Joseph Boselovic
The Billy Hart Quartet The 21c Museum Hotel Durham, NC September 26, 2016 Nearing the end of their first set at the 21c Museum Hotel in downtown jny: Durham, Billy Hart stepped out from behind his set and looked out into the crowd. When he plays the drums, Hart's face often looks strained and stressed, as if every rush across the toms and intricate series of cymbal play comes from some deep place and must ...
read moreBilly Hart Quartet at the Village Vanguard
by Dan Bilawsky
Billy Hart Quartet Village Vanguard New York, NY June 3, 2014 What does it take for an esteemed veteran drummer to get his due as a leader? In the case of the great Billy Hart, it seems that a pair of albums under his name on the ECM imprint--All Our Reasons (ECM, 2012) and One Is The Other (ECM, 2014)--helped to do the trick. Hart, who's been around the block more ...
read moreBilly Hart: Welcoming New, Loving Old, Sounds
by R.J. DeLuke
The ubiquitous drummer Billy Hart brings a special energy to the many projects of which he is a part. A band leader, composer and educator, he's been on hundreds of albums. He has taken the stage with countless bands, adding his rhythmic pulse to formations led by a litany of the biggest names in the business. And at each concert, when Hart is being introduced by whomever the leader--Christian McBride, Eliane Elias, Joe Lovano, the Cookers--they always do ...
read moreBilly Hart Quartet: One is the Other
by John Kelman
There's little doubt about the value of longevity and ongoing musical relationships. It's been nearly a decade since Billy Hart assembled the group that would turn out to be his longest-standing, releasing Quartet (HighNote) in 2006. But it was with 2012's All Our Reasons that the drummer moved to ECM, reaping the benefits of the label's renowned attention to detail. It's also facilitated an accelerated release rate; after a six year gap between the first two records, One is the ...
read moreMarch 2013: Billy Hart Quartet
by RJ Johnson
Billy Hart QuartetPhiladelphia Art AlliancePhiladelphia, PAMarch 20, 2013The music of the Billy Hart Quartet demonstrates a thorough amalgamation of intriguingly disparate musical elements which retains both the mastery of a group of accomplished veterans and the perpetually transformative nature of a leader dedicated to a lifetime of artistic pursuits. The ensemble, consisting of drummer Hart, bassist Ben Street, pianist Ethan Iverson and tenor saxophonist Mark Turner, has been Hart's working band since ...
read moreBilly Hart: All Our Reasons
by John Kelman
In a career spanning work with saxophonist Pharoah Sanders and trumpeter Miles Davis to pianists Tommy Flanagan and Marian McPartland, drummer Billy Hart has pretty much seen it all, from the most centrist mainstream to the outer reaches of free playing and beyond. But as he approaches 72 later in 2012, there's one thing Hart hasn't done--until now. All Our Reasons represents the first time the veteran drummer has reunited the same band as on a previous recording, in this ...
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