Jazz Articles

like 481

Debbie Poryes: Catch Your Breath

by John Barron
April 14, 2010

Recording a disc half-filled with overdone standards should require, at minimum, an attempt at dissection and redirection, investigating any harmonic and rhythmic possibilities left over after decades of use. Such is the case with the release of Catch Your Breath, from San Francisco Bay-area pianist Debbie Poryes. Poryes' approach to arranging involves sophistication with warmth and open-ended possibilities. As a result, Amercan songbook gems like “I've Got the Sun in the Morning" and “My Heart Stood Still" sound fresh and ...

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Take Five With Matt Slocum

by AAJ Staff
April 14, 2010

Meet Matt Slocum:“Matt Slocum's multicolored traps--at times forceful or delicate, creatively painting varied tempos with the essence of swing--define the drummer's debut, Portraits. Hailing from St. Paul, Minnesota, Slocum's introduction carries forward the torch of patriarchs Max Roach and Elvin Jones amongst others, but he also carves out his own rhythmic patterns with young contemporaries such as Eric Harland and Johnathan Blake. Present day jazz is clearly not stagnate in the very good hands (and sticks) of Matt ...

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Luis Munoz: Invisible

by Jerry D'Souza
April 14, 2010

Luis Muñoz is a man of many parts. Not only does he play several instruments, he composed, arranged and orchestrated all the music on this recording. His adaptability is further underscored by the scope of his writing that encompasses several styles all of which make an impact.

Muñoz, who was born in Costa Rica, played in rock and jazz groups in his native country before moving to the United States in 1974. He soon began writing music for documentaries, animation ...

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Ralph Lalama: Steppin' Out, Steppin' Forward

by R.J. DeLuke
April 13, 2010

Ralph Lalama's rich tenor saxophone voice has been heard for years on the New York City scene, perhaps most notably with the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra and its predecessors, first led by Thad Jones and Mel Lewis, and later by just Lewis. He's a guy who grew up when rock music was fully bursting on the American scene, but maintains that not much of that music touched him. He came from a family that listened to jazz and the American Popular ...

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Mike Reed's People, Places & Things: Stories and Negotiations

by Troy Collins
April 13, 2010

Stories and Negotiations is the final chapter in Chicago-based drummer Mike Reed's People, Places & Things trilogy. Debuting with 2008's Proliferation (482 Music), Reed founded this piano-less quartet to investigate an often overlooked period of Chicago's jazz history--the mid-1950s to early 1960s--when the city's after-hours jam session culture flirted with avant-garde collectivism, eventually giving birth to the AACM.

The quartet, whose members include ubiquitous bassist Jason Roebke and the fulsome alto/tenor duo of Greg Ward and Tim Haldeman, ...

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Tom Harrell: Roman Nights

by John Kelman
April 13, 2010

Since coming back from hiatus following the superb Wise Children (Bluebird, 2003), Tom Harrell's been on a roll. On a new label (HighNote) and with a new working quartet, the trumpeter has gone from success to success, from the undeniably fine Light On (2007), to the even better Prana Dance (2009). Whether Roman Dances is even better still is a tough call; Harrell's writing and quintet are so uniformly excellent that comparisons--empirical or otherwise--are rendered moot.

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John McLaughlin and The 4th Dimension: John McLaughlin and The 4th Dimension: To The One

by John Kelman
April 13, 2010

After two studio albums that fell into the category of special projects--the large-casted but surprisingly cohesive Industrial Zen (Verve, 2005) and synth-laden Floating Point (Abstract Logix, 2008), where the iconic guitarist flipped his past concerns of playing eastern music with a western sensibility by recruiting a largely Indian group to play some very western fusion--John McLaughlin finally rights a wrong with To The One. The Miles Davis alum and Mahavishnu Orchestra founder has been touring with an exciting group, The ...

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The State of Organ Jazz 2010 (Pt. 1): Wayne Escoffery, Dan Pratt and Matthew Kaminski

by C. Michael Bailey
April 13, 2010

Organ-based jazz inhabits a unique place as a sub-genre. The combination of the sacred churchy organ with the decadence of blues and bebop made for a heady brew after the introduction of the format by Wild Bill Davis and Bill Doggett in the 1950s. Qualitatively, the names that loom largest in organ jazz are Jimmy Smith, who put organ jazz on the map with his 1960s Blue Note and Verve recordings, and Larry Young, who picked up where Smith left ...

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Nelson Veras: Solo Session Vol. 1

by Jeff Dayton-Johnson
April 13, 2010

Guitarist Nelson Veras's considerable sideman experience has favored the acoustic instrument--a highlight is his mild-mannered straight man to Manu Codjia's volatile electric guitar on Christophe Wallemme's fine large-ensemble Namaste (Bee Jazz, 2006).The relationship between Veras's playing and classic Brazilian guitar--Hélio Delmiro, João Gilberto, Bola Sete--is like that between James Blood Ulmer's playing and the blues: oddly, totally inside the tradition and entirely outside it at the same time. For Veras (and Ulmer, indeed), this has something to do ...

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Take Five with John Evans

by AAJ Staff
April 13, 2010

Meet John Evans: Born in New York City, Evans started piano lessons at age four. A few years later, John saw the movie “The Benny Goodman Story" and was inspired to learn how to play the clarinet. He went to the school band teacher hoping to check out a clarinet, but, as luck would have it, everyone else had seen the movie the day before and there were no more clarinets. The band teacher told John that they ...