Jazz Articles

JD Parran & Mark Deutsch: Omegathorp: Living City

by Jeff Stockton
February 13, 2007

JD Parran is a consummate musician's musician, a multi-reedist who has performed in a wide variety of settings, most notably with Julius Hemphill and members of St. Louis' Black Artists Group, as well as Anthony Braxton's ensembles; he was also a member of the horn section Robbie Robertson introduces at the start of The Band's Rock of Ages. Recorded live at NYC's Merkin Concert Hall on September 12, 2002, Parran and bassist Mark Deutsch co-lead a group that includes pianist ...

JD Parran & Mark Deutsch: Omegathorp: Living City

by Karl A.D. Evangelista
November 9, 2006

The spirit of the exotic weighs strongly on Omegathorp: Living City, the most recent collaboration between reedman J.D. Parran and stringman Mark Deutsch. It's no surprise: Parran was a crucial member of the Black Artists' Group--the seminal St. Louis artists collective and one of the first formal musicians' organizations to champion freely improvised black music--and Deutsch is an acclaimed performer of North Indian classical music. Nonetheless, there is hardly a trace of tension about the album; what might, in lesser ...

Jabbo Ware: Vignettes in the Spirit of Ellington

by Robert R. Calder
February 2, 2006

Jabbo Ware Vignettes in the Spirit of Ellington 2005 Y'All of New York, Inc.

I've not encountered (James) Jabbo Ware's Me, We and Them Orchestra before. He was, I read, born in Georgia and studied in St. Louis. There, when he was eighteen, a music teacher took him to a Duke Ellington concert. Thus in 1960 Ellington became his hero and compositional model.

Jabbo Ware played alto saxophone in R&B groups, and wrote and ...