Jazz Articles

like 619

Denny Zeitlin: Nothing Halfway

by Dan McClenaghan
July 19, 2010

San Francisco-based jazz pianist Denny Zeitlin--aka Dr. Dennis Zeitlin, Psychiatrist--boasts a music career that spans more than fifty years. He began, at a tender young age, playing professionally in the early fifties in his home town of Chicago. He was, very early in his life, interested in the fields of medicine and music, and he has been able to navigate career paths in both disciplines with great success.He has recorded more than thirty albums, beginning with a series ...

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Ken Fowser / Behn Gillece: Little Echo

by John Barron
July 19, 2010

Tenor saxophonist Ken Fowser and vibraphonist Behn Gillece have been performing together since the 1990s as teenagers growing up outside of Philadelphia. Now residents of New York City, the two host a weekly jam session at Smalls Jazz Club where they've had the opportunity to perform with an A-list of jazz performers. Little Echo, the follow up to their critically acclaimed 2009 debut Full View (Posi-Tone), puts a modern twist on classic hard bop sounds with a swinging quintet performing ...

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Royce Campbell: Solo Trane

by Jack Huntley
July 19, 2010

There are some albums which, on the very first listening, create an immediate auditory union with the musician. Credit ability, musicality, interpretation, song choice, or a blending of each, Royce Campbell's solo guitar tribute to the music of John Coltrane, Solo Trane, is one of those albums. It crackles with energy and creative force as Campbell winds his way through the Coltrane book, adding evocative originals along the way. Campbell, a Washington D.C.-based veteran guitarist whose albums are always musically ...

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Rag, Saddle and All: Curlew and George Cartwright / Davu Seru

by Clifford Allen
July 19, 2010

Saxophonist and composer George Cartwright might not be an oft-repeated name in creative improvised music, but he should garner a weighted whistle whenever he does crop up. Raised in Mississippi and now calling Minneapolis home, Cartwright was co-leader of the seminal New York post-RIO/squirrely downtown jazz ensemble Curlew, alongside cellist Tom Cora, throughout the 1980s and into the 1990s. In 2010, Curlew barely registers a blip when people talk about the “Downtown" scene, but with such luminaries as ...

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Full Circle: Underbelly

by Bruce Lindsay
July 18, 2010

The British piano trio, Full Circle brings a wide range of influences and experiences to Underbelly, their debut album. The result is a slickly-produced collection of original tunes from three talented musicians and writers. Pianist Joss Peach, who composed most of the tunes, is a percussionist as well as a pianist and plays with a bright, percussive, sound that immediately lends an upbeat feel to many of the tunes--"Rosie Lea" is a good example, with Peach trading ...

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Sunny Murray: On Taking the Leap from One Reality to Another

by Robert Levin
July 18, 2010

The following is a chapter from “Going Outside: Fiction * Commentary * Jazz." robert-levin.com. [Author's Note: Sunny Murray is widely regarded as the preeminent drummer of the free jazz movement. The “Jeanne" mentioned below was Jeanne Phillips. Although there were, to be sure, significant differences--she was black, she worked a forty hour-a-week civil service job and her one bedroom flat on West 10th Street in New York City was no showplace--Jeanne, who was astonishingly astute ...

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Ken Fowser & Behn Gillece: Little Echo

by Dan Bilawsky
July 18, 2010

Tenor saxophone and vibraphone frontlines--while not as commonplace as two horn teams--have their place in history. Lionel Hampton and Stan Getz had a marvelous meeting in the studio and Milt Jackson recorded with Sonny Rollins, Coleman Hawkins and John Coltrane, on different occasions. Bobby Hutcherson added to this legacy, working with Dexter Gordon and maintaining a fruitful partnership with Harold Land, and now tenor saxophonist Ken Fowser and vibraphonist Behn Gillece are furthering this legacy. Little Echo ...

like 195

A Triple Bill of Keys & Drums

by Robert Iannapollo
July 18, 2010

Three albums by keyboards and drums duos--two of them recorded in the early 1990s, the third in the noughties--demonstrate the wide and varied territory this pared down instrumentation can inhabit.

Andrew Hill / Chico HamiltonDreams Come TrueJoyous Shout!2008

On paper, the duet of late pianist Andrew Hill and drummer Chico Hamilton seems odd. Hamilton is the inventive timekeeper par excellence as well as a great textural player. Hill, especially in small groupings, is all ...

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Denis DiBlasio: View from Pikes

by Victor L. Schermer
July 18, 2010

Originally released in 2006, this “sleeper" of an album may not contain breathtaking breakthroughs, but it's so good for what it does that it deserves attention. View from Pikes provides consistent listening pleasure from start to finish. The absence of drums actually facilitates the sweet, laidback playing of the Denis DiBlasio/Steve Varner/Jim Ridl trio, which maintains the pulse quite well. DiBlasio did five years as Music Director with Maynard Ferguson, was a prime mover at the late, great Ortliebs Jazzhaus ...

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Rudresh Mahanthappa: Apti & Real People

by Robert Iannapollo
July 18, 2010

Rudresh Mahanthappa's Indo-Pak CoalitionAptiInnova2008 Anders Mogensen/Rudresh Mahanthappa/Kasper Tranberg/Jacob Anderskov/Carlo DeRosaReal PeopleBlackout2008 Over the past ten years alto saxophonist Rudresh Mahanthappa has succeeded where others have failed in fusing Indian musical traditions into modern jazz. His sinewy lines, while coursing along with the lissome grace of Indian improvisers, also reflect the harmonic edginess of players like Eric Dolphy and Jackie McLean. These ...