Jazz Articles about Mike Neer

About Mike Neer

Album Review

Dave Sewelson: Smooth FreeJazz

Read "Smooth FreeJazz" reviewed by Mark Corroto

by Mark Corroto
December 9, 2021

If you're a lover of adventurous music, you've certainly had the following experience. You take a seat in a coffee house or even worse in your dentist's chair and out of the speakers flows (stifle your tears) smooth jazz. You might welcome the John Cage—ian sound of the espresso frothier or the Merzbow noise of the dentist's drill to liberate your ears from the banal music. Never fear, to the rescue comes Dave Sewelson and his Smooth FreeJazz

Album Review

Mike Neer: Steelonious

Read "Steelonious" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey

by C. Michael Bailey
December 6, 2016

Early in his musical career, pianist and composer Thelonious Monk was ordained the “Hight Priest of Bebop." This sounds more like a disingenuous pronouncement by an overeager period critic than any credible music reportage. Monk's essential musical approach owed more to stride, blues, and swing than to Charlie Parker's and Dizzy Gillespie's bebop. Monk's technical brilliance, if one could call it that, was not geared toward the “technique" of rapid and complexly rendered chord changes. Monk's brilliance lay somewhere much ...