Jazz Articles

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Nick Manson: Mercator

by Jay Deshpande
November 4, 2008

Throughout his career, pianist Nick Manson has appeared in a wide variety of musical settings. He played in Lenny Kravitz's band in the early 80s, wrote Emmy-winning themes for television, and also composed a large oeuvre of commercial music. With Mercator, he returns to the jazz he grew up with, playing original compositions in a quartet format.

Manson is an excellent technician at the keyboard, and he brings to his compositions a very natural sense of melody. The songs on ...

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Andy Suzuki: Prime

by Dan McClenaghan
April 13, 2008

You'd think the job of making a successful jazz CD would be hard enough without imposing restrictions on the process. The restriction that saxophonist Andy Suzuki has tackled on Prime is prime numbers--and refresher for those who have forgotten their math studies, a prime number is one those that can be divided only by itself and the number one.Enter the mathematically inclined Suzuki, who wanted to ."..combine my interest in composition and my fascination with numbers." Prime numbers ...