Jazz Articles

like 289

Thôt: With Words Vol. 2

by Chris May
June 27, 2010

So self-contained is the modern French jazz scene by comparison with those in Britain, Scandinavia and the US, that some of its most interesting artists are practically unknown beyond their home turf. Take Thôt, the quartet led by saxophonist Stephane Payen with guitarist Gilles Coronado, bassist Hubert Dupont and drummer Christophe Lavergne. Founded in 1997, and with a handful of spin-off line-ups including Thôt Drums Project, Thôt Twin and Thôt Agrandi, the band has made only infrequent forays further afield, ...

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Denny Zeitlin: Precipice: Solo Piano Concert

by Raul d'Gama Rose
June 27, 2010

The singular mission of Denny Zeitlin continues with Precipice, the recorded document of a concert in January, 2008 at Ralston Hall, Santa Barbara, California. The experience is at once predictably exquisite as it creates a state of a type of suspended animation, floating with utter weightless abandon, as composer and pianist, Zeitlin flies over the edge of its proverbial cliff seduced by the thunderous cascade of music. This is how the music builds up to that frenetic quantum energy by ...

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Bobby Watson at the Saville Theater, San Diego, CA

by Robert Bush
June 27, 2010

Bobby Watson Quartet Saville Theater (San Diego City College) San Diego, CA May 11, 2010 Currently based in Kansas City, where he teaches at the University of Missouri/ Conservatory of Music, Bobby Watson has a long, storied career. He attended music school in Miami in the 1970's, where his classmates included Pat Metheny, Jaco Pastorius, Mike Stern, and Mark Egan. After leaving school, he joined the legendary Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers, serving ...

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George Cotsirilos Trio: Past Present

by Woodrow Wilkins
June 27, 2010

This recording delivers vintage jazz guitar but nothing that sounds trite or old. The George Cotsirilos Trio delivers that with a mix of original tunes and standards on Past Present. Born in Chicago, Cotsirilos has been a fixture in the San Francisco area since the early 1990s. Trained with the violin, he switched to guitar after becoming frustrated that the violin could not produce pop and jazz sounds he had come to love. After studying at the University ...

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Fred Anderson: 1929-2010

by Kurt Gottschalk
June 26, 2010

There aren't many artists with so singular a vision as that of late Fred Anderson, who died June 24 at the age of 81. There are fewer to be certain if the list is restricted to members of that exalted and nebulous class called “masters." It's a word that, in jazz, gets thrown around a little too casually. A master composer might excel at writing for string quartet as well as symphony. A master musician might be fluent in a ...

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Terry Pack: Palimpsest

by Bruce Lindsay
June 26, 2010

During a career that spans four decades, British bassist Terry Pack has been a member of prog rockers The Enid, worked as a session musician for a diverse array of musicians including Steve Howe and Candy Dulfer and played in bands across much of the world from Europe to South America and Australia. He played jazz from his earliest years as a musician, working with singer Liane Carroll from the early 1980s, and in 2006 he released his first album ...

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Mikrokolektyw: Revisit

by John Barron
June 26, 2010

The Polish avant-jazz duo Mikrokolektyw has been creating a buzz on the European music scene for the last few years. Consisting of trumpeter Artur Majewski and drummer Kuba Suchar, the duo explores improvisations of the moment over electronic rhythm loops on the eleven-track disc Revisit. Having shared the stage with high-profile Chicago musicians like Fred Anderson, Nicole Mitchell and Rob Mazurek, it seems fitting that Mikrokolektyw is the first ever European jazz group to record for Chicago's Delmark Records.

The ...

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Mary McBride at Housing Works, June 16 2010

by Ernest Barteldes
June 26, 2010

Mary McBride Housing Works June 16, 2010 New York, NY

On her New York stop of the promotional tour for her new release The Way Home, soul-folk singer-songwriter Mary McBride hit the stage of lower Manhattan's Housing Works backed by a solid power trio that at once made you forget that the horns featured on the disc were not present. She opened with a soul-tinged tune that set the tone for the concert, ...

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Christian Scott Quintet, Live at the Saville Theater, San Diego, CA

by Robert Bush
June 26, 2010

Christian Scott Quintet Saville Theater (San Diego City College) San Diego, CA April 13, 2010

I believe it was the English writer/contrarian George Bernard Shaw who first coined the phrase: “Youth is wasted on the young." Anybody buying into that cliché was soon set straight--provided they were fortunate enough to be among the standing-room-only-crowd who witnessed this performance. Twenty seven year old trumpeter Christian Scott last appeared in San Diego as a guest of ...

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Margret: Com Voce

by Raul d'Gama Rose
June 26, 2010

The blushing, demure voice of Margret Grebowicz is a thing of rare and extraordinary beauty. Everything about her is so perfect that she seems to exist in singular splendor. She is pitch-perfect, no matter how nuanced the note she sings is. Usually she can make this up with a tone so freshly subtle and unusual that she seems to have been created it on her own. She can make notes undulate at her command. Her intonation is soft and sung ...