Articles by Gloria Krolak
Mark Rapp Group At The Jazz Corner
by Gloria Krolak
Mark Rapp Group The Jazz Corner Hilton Head Island, SC January 31, 2025 It was not a Tuesday and it was a full month before Ash Wednesday, the start of the Christian observance of Lent, but it felt like Mardi Gras at The Jazz Corner on Hilton Head Island. Colorful beads draped all the tables and a sousaphone oversaw the stage. The musicians readying to perform are some of the strongest proponents of New ...
Continue ReadingTRIAD with Dominick Farinacci, Christian Tamburr and Michael Ward-Bergeman at The Jazz Corner
by Gloria Krolak
TRIAD with Dominick Farinacci, Christian Tamburr and Michael Ward-Bergeman The Jazz Corner Hilton Head Island, SC May 24, 2024 It was a Memorial Day weekend to remember. Like you, we honored veterans, welcomed back the summer season, and had some fun on an extra day off. Christian Tamburr, Dominick Farinacci and Michael Ward-Bergeman debuted their co-led ensemble TRIAD and their eponymous new album at The Jazz Corner on Hilton Head Island, SC. As the host ...
Continue ReadingHi-Hats Off to The Jazz Corner on Its 25th
by Gloria Krolak
Twenty-five years ago, on March 30, 1999, Bob and Lois Masteller opened their club, The Jazz Corner, on Hilton Head Island, South Carolina. They had both enjoyed productive careers, he in human resources, she in property management. Now it was time to indulge their passion for jazz. Bob grew up with music in the house--his dad was a jazz violinist--and became a keeper of the flame by playing horns and vibraphone. Lois was his biggest fan. They both wanted to ...
Continue ReadingJazz Lines: Free Verse In The Key Of Jazz
by Gloria Krolak
Duke Ellington, composer, arranger, pianist and originator of big-band jazz, wrote “Sweet Jazz O'Mine" in 1930 when the genre was blooming. As a bandleader, Ellington was unsurpassed. He chose his musicians wisely and inspired some of their best work. “Sweet Jazz" is a lively foxtrot celebrating this unorthodox new style that had people dancing and feeling good. What became my poem is a collection of songs about the instruments that make up the whole, the drums, the trombone, the clarinet, ...
Continue ReadingThe Fantastic Nicknames Of Jazz
by Gloria Krolak
Nicknames. Used to be that every baseball player worth his ash bat earned a nickname. The Babe, Yogi Berra, The Kid, Three Finger. Football and basketball were no different. Boomer Esiason, Big Spain, Birdman, Air Jordan. While soccer in America seems to have escaped this mostly male preoccupation of renaming people, golf, that most courteous sport, has its share as well. The Golden Bear, Pink Panther, The Great White Shark. In music, particularly in jazz, nicknames were plentiful, ...
Continue ReadingPaul Jost: Simple Life
by Gloria Krolak
Just sometimes an album pierces your consciousness, embedding itself like an arrow propelled into a bale of hay. Paul Jost's Simple Life is one of that rare breed, a welcome intrusion into the grey matter where emotion and language spark axons. Jost is an expert at both. And a master at unifying diverse and eclectic material. The CD includes two Jost originals and a playlist that runs from classic jazz to contemporary. What brings it all together, in addition to ...
Continue ReadingThe Jazz Corner's Lois Masteller Makes It Happen
by Gloria Krolak
As a child my mother and legion of aunts--I'm from a large Italian family--tried to impose the “meant to be" philosophy on me. Remember the tune “Que Sera, Sera/Whatever will be, will be"? When something good happened, say you won a ribbon at the science fair, it was because “it was meant to be." The converse was also true, insinuating you only need wait for things to go your way, not work for them. That advice chafed like an over-starched ...
Continue ReadingAt Mara's... Sweet, Savory and Seasoned with Jazz
by Gloria Krolak
On a Friday night at Mara's Café and Bakery in Berkeley Heights, you can satisfy several cravings at once: Answer the dinner bell, soothe a sweet tooth and hear eight New Jersey locals wail at some not-so-standard jazz tunes. The octet is Jazz Lab 6+2, which began as a sextet, then added two more players. These are serious and gifted multi-instrumentalists who burn to share what they've concocted in their laboratory. Jackson Liu, Mara's owner, gave them free rein over ...
Continue ReadingRuby Lee's Dishes up Blues, Jazz and Soul Food
by Gloria Krolak
Three-year-old Ruby Lee's, on the quieter north end of Hilton Head Island, SC, serves up the blues, jazz and soul food. That mix helps set the venue apart from more than 300 restaurants vying for the patronage of the resort town's 39,000 residents and some 2.5 million annual visitors. Proud matriarch and head chef Deborah Govan, who offered these stats, told me that since she founded the place named after her mother in 2013, Ruby Lee's has climbed ...
Continue ReadingDue Mari Joins the New Brunswick Jazz Project
by Gloria Krolak
Thanks to the efforts of three friends, Virginia DeBerry, Jimmy Lenihan and Mike Tublin, creators of the New Brunswick Jazz Project, it's getting harder to dine out in that Middlesex County city without hearing some jazz. The Hyatt Regency, Tumulty's Pub, The Garden State Ale House and Esquina Latina all offer jazz on a regular schedule. Since last May, add Friday nights at Due Mari to that list. Due Mari is a modern Italian restaurant on Albany Street ...
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