Articles by Bruce Crowther

Ren

by Bruce Crowther
October 22, 2003

A lot can happen in four years. Lives can evolve from secretive and sad to open and free. People can move from chains to change. Dreams can be followed, lessons learned, friends lost, dignity gained. Strongly entrenched beliefs can be blown to smithereens, personal barriers can be broken through again and again and again. In four years. In only four years.

Those eloquent word are René Marie’s and they need no editorial comment, except perhaps ...

Donny McCaslin: Feeling the Spirit

by Bruce Crowther
October 16, 2003

When I play, I try to remember what this music means to me as a listener. When I hear something that really speaks to me on an emotional level -- like, say, a solo by Lester Young -- that is when I know what this is all about.

The speaker is Donny McCaslin, who was born on August 11, 1966, in Santa Clara, California. Although his parents, Don and Jeanina, were divorced when he was a small child, ...

David Hazeltine: Making it Mean Something

by Bruce Crowther
October 16, 2003

'When I was about ten or eleven years old, my mother bought me my first jazz record. It was Jimmy Smith Plays The Standards, and I fell in love with jazz at that point'

Beginnings ...

'At first playing with these people it was just plain scary and intimidating.'

One of the outstanding jazz piano players in the world today, David Hazeltine grew up in ...