Articles by Peter Jurew
SPHERES at Nublu 151
by Peter Jurew
SPHERES Nublu 151 New York, NY July 8 and August 6, 2019 SPHERES is a jazz collective recently started by keyboardist Jamie Saft and electric guitarist Chuck Hammer playing monthly gigs at Nublu, a loft-club showcase for new music in jny: New York City's East Village. Taking inspiration as well as its name from Thelonious Sphere Monk, their two gigs to date have seen Saft and Hammer pair up with top-flight rhythm sections and journey ...
read moreNew York Japanese Jazz Festival 2019
by Peter Jurew
New York Japanese Jazz Festival Smoke Jazz & Supper Club New York, NY June 25-27, 2019 The Japanese people's love for jazz, rock, blues and other forms of music with African-American roots has been well established for decades. Working bands and musicians at all levels of fame regularly make the Land of the Rising Sun a destination and are met with uniquely polite audiences whose intense devotion can border on the worshipful. In the improvisational ...
read moreRon Carter Quartet At Regattabar
by Peter Jurew
Ron Carter Quartet Regattabar Cambridge, MA February 22, 2019 You are the World's Greatest Jazz Bassist," as a sign used to say at The Knickerbocker Saloon in New York City, where you and Cedar Walton held forth for many years. You have been at the top of your profession for sixty years, becoming the most recorded bassist in history along the way. Your bottom end musical offspring abound: since Kennedy was president, ...
read moreThe Branford Marsalis Quartet at Jazz Standard
by Peter Jurew
Branford Marsalis Quartet Jazz Standard New York, NY February 20, 2019 The Branford Marsalis Quartet came into jny: New York's Jazz Standard in late February to showcase The Secret Between The Shadow And The Soul, their first new album release in seven years and, in marking the special occasion, to blow the roof off that primetime jazz basement. That it has been seven years since the band's last new release does not ...
read morePhilip Glass Ensemble Performs Music In Twelve Parts At Town Hall
by Peter Jurew
Philip Glass Ensemble Town Hall New York, NY October 27, 2018 Philip Glass's monumental Music in Twelve Parts was originally intended to be performed over three nights. It's a marathon," Lisa Bielawa, the Ensemble's singer, has said. The way people train for a marathon is the way we prepare for this piece." Returning to jny: New York's Town Hall where it debuted in 1974, the four-hour cycle was performed in ...
read moreJaimoe's Jasssz Band at the Iridium
by Peter Jurew
Jaimoe's Jasssz Band The Iridium New York, NY July 24, 2017 When guitarist Duane Allman was looking to start a band in 1969, the first musician he hired was drummer Jai Johanny Johanson. Just 24 years old at the time, Johanson, becoming known from Memphis to Muscle Shoals simply as Jaimoe, was already a veteran of the R&B circuit, having toured with Sam & Dave and Otis Redding. Crossing paths in the evolving music scene, ...
read moreEmi Ferguson: Amour Cruel
by Peter Jurew
Crossing musical borders is a risky business. Our culture loves certainty; the marketplace prefers easily distinguishable, homogenous categories. Whereas contemporary visual artists, at least since Rauschenberg, receive critical praise (and financial reward) for combining styles and materials previously thought to be discrete, contemporary musicians who cross boundaries put their reputations, and sometimes their careers, on the line. This is especially true of the musician who comes from the classical tradition and crosses over into pop, rock or jazz.
read moreTim Ries With Randy Brecker at Drom
by Peter Jurew
Tim Ries with Randy BreckerDromNew York, NYJune 21, 2017 Saxophonist Tim Ries has made a name for himself internationally as a jazz educator and composer, leader and sideman. A master of tenor and soprano saxophones, since 2007, he's also known for playing in the Rolling Stones's horn section on several world tours. Those side gigs led to two well-received albums of Ries- arranged Stones material performed by jazz ensembles that have included Mick Jagger, Keith ...
read moreCharles Mingus 95th Birthday Celebration
by Peter Jurew
Mingus Big BandJazz StandardNew York, NY April 24, 2017 Saturday, April 22, was an unusually good day. It started, blessedly, when the president did not tweet out a series of early morning fabrications/accusations to befuddle the free world. And it could only get better from there: It was Earth Day! Scientists marked the 27th edition with a global March For Science, and tens of thousands of people made a full-throated defense of fact-based (as opposed ...
read moreJessie Lambiase Featuring Gil Parris
by Peter Jurew
Jessie Lambiase Featuring Gil Parris IridiumNew York, NYMarch 10, 2017 Lovers of fine guitar playing are aware of the monstrous chops of Gil Parris, the jazz, blues and rock master who has been called one of guitardom's unsung heroes." How can it be that a virtuoso who's been nominated for a Grammy and recorded and toured both as a solo artist and sideman with the likes of Dr. John, Diane Schuur, and Bobby Caldwell, to ...
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