Jazz Articles

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DJ Grazzhoppa's DJ Bigband + Aka Moon: DJ Grazzhoppa's DJ Bigband + Aka Moon

by Jeff Dayton-Johnson
July 14, 2010

There is no shortage of matchmakers seeking to arrange the marriage of jazz and hip hop. Back in the 1980s, pianist Herbie Hancock collaborated with DJ DST, while hip hop duo Gangstarr ostentatiously sampled classic jazz records. In the 1990s, rappers A Tribe Called Quest invited bassist Ron Carter to play on The Low End Theory (Jive, 1991), while saxophonist Greg Osby, in turn, brought in Quest producer Ali Shaheed Muhammad on his 3D Lifestyles (Blue Note, 1993). Today, Robert ...

like 586

Timucin Sahin: Fretless and Fearless

by Matthew Warnock
July 14, 2010

Exciting, creative, challenging, noise, nonsense, genius--all of these words and more have been used for decades by critics and listeners alike to describe the avant-garde movement in jazz. While there seems to be no consensus on the genres appeal, some love it and others detest it, the avant-garde has always had a unique ability to draw out emotions in people, regardless of their listening preferences. The music is technically and musically challenging to the performers and to the listeners as ...

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Tribe: Message From The Tribe: An Anthology of Tribe Records 1972-1976

by Chris May
July 14, 2010

If the 1960s was the decade of sexual liberation and psycho-pharmaceuticals, the 1970s was the decade of self-empowerment and community activism, and nowhere was this more true than in black America. Musicians were among the vanguard of the activists, forming collectives to increase their leverage within the “entertainment" industry and, through education projects, to strengthen their links with the communities in which they operated. The first, and still the best known, of these collectives was Chicago's Association for the Advancement ...

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Duke Ellington Tames The Savage Beasts: Lions and Tigers and Bears (and Gazelles!)

by Dan Bilawsky
July 14, 2010

I begin this edition of Old, New, Borrowed and Blue with a confession. I have an unabashed love for the music of Duke Ellington. From his brilliantly scored compositions, to the singular instrumental personalities in his band(s)--with Ellington, Jimmy Hamilton and Johnny Hodges ranking at the top of my list--Ellington seems to transcend the “big band" tag and his music really deserves the designation of “fine art." Writers have been treating this music as such for over seventy five years, ...

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Jim Manley: Brass Poison

by Nicholas F. Mondello
July 14, 2010

Mythology and its partners--history and literature--are replete with accounts of poisonings of all kinds; romantic, political, and those unfortunately accidental. Most of these tales culminate with unhappy, tragic endings. Someone usually “gets it" in the end. With Brass Poison, star trumpeter Jim Manley shrewdly plays title tongue-in-cheek, and delivers a supremely enjoyable and seductively cooking rocktail. Following up on his fine Eight (Victoria, 2008), Manley and his St. Louis- based crew grab hold of a handful of ...

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Bettye Lavette: Interpretations - The British Rock Songbook

by Jeff Dayton-Johnson
July 14, 2010

Bettye Lavette Interpretations: The British Rock SongbookAnti- Records2010

Perennial also-ran Bettye Lavette, among the many very good 1960s Detroit soul singers not signed to Motown--others include Barbara Lewis, Deon Jackson and Edwin Starr--offers a concept album of sorts. An interesting concept, too: R&B covers of classic British rock hits, from roughly the mid-1960s to the early 1970s (Led Zeppelin's “All My Love," from 1979, is an outlier in temporal terms).There ...

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Nat Birchall: Alone In The Music

by Chris May
July 13, 2010

Two of the most over-used phrases in music journalism are “overnight star" and “out of nowhere," and so apologies for starting with them here. But when it comes to describing British saxophonist Nat Birchall, they have an unusual degree of exactitude. Birchall, born in 1957 in the rural seclusion of the hill country of North-West England, where he still lives in 2010, and a saxophonist since 1979, didn't make an impression on Britain's national jazz scene until 2009, when he ...

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Christine Tobin and Liam Noble: Tapestry Unravelled

by Bruce Lindsay
July 13, 2010

For many jazz singers, the Great American Songbook is the body of work that must be delved into and reinterpreted. In more recent years, the work of writers such as Tom Waits and Nick Cave is emerging as the source for some fine jazz-based interpretations. The singer/songwriters of the '70s, perhaps surprisingly, have yet to become such a central part of the jazz vocal canon, but singer Christine Tobin and pianist Liam Noble may be set to change things with ...

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DC Jazz Festival Perseveres Through Sixth Year

by Franz A. Matzner
July 13, 2010

DC Jazz FestivalWashington, D.C.June 1-13, 2010 The biggest success of the sixth annual Washington, D.C. jazz festival may simply have been pulling it off. Faced with difficult economic times and a rebranding from the Duke Ellington Jazz Festival to the DC Jazz Festival, which according to several sources resulted from a dispute over rights to the festival's name, the event could easily have sputtered out of existence. Instead, festival founder and dedicated impresario Charles Fishman persevered ...

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Pete Robbins: siLENT Z Live

by Mark F. Turner
July 13, 2010

Since his 2002 debut, Centric (Telepathy Records), saxophonist Pete Robbins has charted a centrifugal trajectory, moving outward from traditional boundaries. His previous releases--Waits & Measures (Playscape, 2006) and Do The Laugh Hate Shimmy (Fresh Sound New Talent, 2008)--incorporated elements of jazz, rock and electronics with thought-provoking writing and improvisation. Incessantly stirring the creative juices in any number of projects/ensembles, this release documents Robbins' siLENT Z band, at New York's Cornelia Street Cafe and would prompt the question of how his ...