Jazz Articles

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Anthony Jackson / Yiorgos Fakanas: Interspirit

by Ian Patterson
May 10, 2010

Although receiving billing as Anthony Jackson's first solo CD in a career spanning four decades, this is really a tale of two bassists. Greek bassist/composer Yiorgos Fakanas wrote all the music on Interspirit and takes all five bass solos. The music, however, was composed with the formidably talented Jackson in mind, and his legions of admirers will be delighted by his improvised and composed bass lines. His playing demands close listening behind the multi-instrument orchestration, plying fusion and funk with ...

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Nels Cline: Of Singers and Sound

by Rex Butters
May 10, 2010

Mimi Melnick's Salons feature some of Los Angeles' best improvising musicians in the most intimate of settings--her home, at the top of a hillside overlooking the San Fernando Valley. This afternoon's trio tunes, and tests sound levels. Bass wizard and longtime UCLA professor Roberto Miranda banters with veteran drummer Bert Karl, while the group's lanky guitarist, Nels Cline, studiously tunes a vintage Fender Jazz Master, and a fretless hollow-bodied 11-string that probably exists only in the arsenal of the versatile ...

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Maria Neckam: Deeper

by Dan Bilawsky
May 9, 2010

The music of vocalist Maria Neckam defies easy categorization. Neckam, a native Austrian living in New York since 2005, has never subscribed to the idea of belonging to one specific subset of the music world. She has brought her unique vocal talents into rock realms, classical settings, modern jazz and various other arenas and her voice has a hypnotic purity that has the potential to stop people dead in their tracks. Her music, filled with catchy vocal hooks and lyrics ...

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The State of Organ Jazz 2010 (Part 2): Stanton Moore and Organissimo

by C. Michael Bailey
May 9, 2010

The State of Organ Jazz 2010, Part I: Wayne Escoffery, Dan Pratt and Matthew Kaminski dealt with some very fine organ-based jazz, that, for the most part, colored within the lines. This second installment focuses on the organ, guitar and drums trio and is devoted to two artists who definitely got their nuclear funk on: drummer and bandleader Stanton Moore and the Organissimo combo.

Is this jazz? Well, not in a Jimmy Smith sort of way. It is more as ...

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Graham Collier: Darius / Midnight Blue / New Conditions

by Nic Jones
May 9, 2010

Graham Collier Music Darius / Midnight Blue / New Conditions BGO 2009

The benefit of hindsight reveals how the three LPs, recorded in the mid-1970s, collected here form the bridge between British bassist, composer and bandleader Graham Collier's early small group work and the expansion of tonal palette and compositional ambition that have marked his more recent forays. His music thus amounts to one of those occasions when increasing ambition is complimented by increasing ...

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Ton Van Bergeyk: Famous Fingerpicking Guitar Solos From the Golden Era of American Pop Music

by David Rickert
May 9, 2010

Ton Van Bergeyk is one of those artists who will forever toil in obscurity, known only amongst his fellow musicians as a true master--if he is recognized at all. Sadly, there isn't much demand for his style of music, and he will always be admired more for his complete mastery of finger-style guitar than for any of his musical contributions. Fortunately, Stefan Grossman has been reissuing hard-to-find gems, like this 1976 recording, on his Guitar Workshop label. With any luck, ...

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Denise King and Venissa Santi Conclude Billie Holiday Tribute at the Kimmel Center, Philadelphia

by Victor L. Schermer
May 9, 2010

Kimmel Center's Jazz Up Close Series, 2009-2010 Season Back in Your Own Back Yard: Billie Holiday Tribute Denise King and Venissa Santi Philadelphia, Pennsylvania May 1, 2010

This, the final concert in an eclectic series organized by Curator Danilo Perez and linked by the goal of honoring the memory of the great Billie Holiday, featured two fine divas, each bringing her own style and musical agenda to bear on Holiday's signature ...

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Solveig Slettahjell / Slow Motion Orchestra: Tarpan Seasons

by John Kelman
May 9, 2010

From a simple idea, great things can sometimes come. When Solveig Slettahjell formed Slow Motion Orchestra for a 2001 performance that became the 15-piece group's eponymous first recording on Norway's Curling Legs, the premise was simple: take a collection of songs from the Great American Songbook, and slow them down. Way down. But over the course of three albums and an eye-opening performance at Kristiansand's 2007 Punkt Festival, the Norwegian singer and her trimmed-down quintet proved that slow, powerful and ...

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Blaise Siwula and Dom Minasi: Live at The Matt Bevel Institute

by Gordon Marshall
May 9, 2010

Dom Minasi is an acutely sensitive guitarist with an oblique approach and an aim to please, plucking his way through runs with persistence and nerve. His live duet with saxophonist Blaise Siwula sums these qualities up neatly, in configurations that unfold and build up melodically through a set that, by the end, is enveloped in a glorious buzz.

A paradox is at work within Minasi's style. His lines underscoring Siwula's sax passages have a geometrical torque, but he inflects them ...

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David Binney: Aliso

by Karl Ackermann
May 9, 2010

Saxophonist David Binney's resume boasts of diverse stints with Maria Schneider, Craig Taborn, and Uri Caine among many others; a wide range of styles with the best musicians, composers and arrangers in jazz. While the scope of his talents as both a player and composer are recognized by his fellow musicians, wider public recognition has still been somewhat elusive. Though Binney's playing has always been inventive, it has also had an element of restraint that seemed to hold it within ...