Jazz Articles

Nate Birkey: Rome

by Victor L. Schermer
November 15, 2017

With this listenable and relaxed album, trumpeter Nate Birkey joins with four excellent musicians he hooked up with while playing in Italy to deliver a set of mostly ballads in his signature style with introspective improvising, empathic warmth, and minimal vibrato. His playing here is reminiscent of Bix Beiderbecke, one of Chet Baker's formative influences. The band, consisting of Roberto Tarenzi and Manuel Magrini alternating on piano, Luca Bulgarelli on bass. and Alessandro Marzi on drums is well attuned to ...

Nate Birkey: Just a Closer Walk

by Victor L. Schermer
October 6, 2014

Nate Birkey is a fine New York-based trumpeter who traveled a biographical route from childhood in Colorado to Boston's Berklee School of Music, then to various parts of the West Coast, living and working in the Los Angeles area for a while, and finally settling into the big-time jazz scene in NYC a few years ago. His travels are important, for they formed the foundation for an understanding of the American spirit that infuses his playing. He has made nine ...

Nate Birkey: Christmas

by Victor L. Schermer
November 27, 2008

This may be the most laid back Christmas album ever. The more typical holiday records bring to mind sleigh-bells, snowmen, parties, families, caroling, mistletoe, chestnuts on an open fire, and fond memories of past holidays. What comes to mind in connection with Nate Birkey: Christmas are dry martinis, The New Yorker magazine, twilights by the ocean, and being half-asleep as embers glow in the fireplace. Even though the songs are mostly regulars for Christmas and New Years, the style provides ...

Nate Birkey: Almost Home

by Victor L. Schermer
August 15, 2008

This laid-back, mostly cool jazz album with echoes of the West Coast 1950s sound also bespeaks a certain dramatic intensity. Further, it invokes a shade of country blues as it goes along. Nate Birkey's trumpet and vocal renditions of both his own songs and some standards are enjoyable to hear, partly because they are strongly reminiscent of Chet Baker (with muted resonances to Miles Davis) while representing Birkey's own persona and interpretations, which possess a sincerity that contrasts with Baker's ...

Julie Christensen: Sometihing Familiar

by Michael P. Gladstone
August 6, 2007

Julie Christensen is a jazz vocalist with a very non-jazz past, who can easily win you over with her unusual delivery and choice of material.

Something Familiar begins with Jimmy Webb's obscure “Just Like Marilyn," and seems about as far away from a jazz opener as one can get. By the time Christensen segues into Frank Loesser's “Never Will I Marry," from the Broadway musical, Greenwillow, there's the feeling that good things could be ahead. A ...

Nate Birkey: Ballads

by AAJ Staff
September 20, 2002

There is a mystical quality to Nate Birkey that manifests itself in both his vocals and Trumpet style. Birkey has been compared to both Miles Davis and Chet Baker, and his playing has more than a touch of the former and a whole lot of the latter. And Mr Birkey with a nod to his influences, adds his own message that makes this recording a most enjoyable endeavor.

“I'll Be Seeing You" Nice relaxed vocal. Trumpet solo ...