Jazz Articles

like 283

Norm Stockton: Tea in The Typhoon

by C. Michael Bailey
February 3, 2010

West Coast freelance bassist Norm Stockton describes his instrumental music as, “contemporary jazz, but with wide influences including funk, fusion, rock, West African, and even a bit of classical." Indeed, not to mention an extroverted electric bass style that somehow retains the sheer technical power of Jaco Pastorius without the hubris. Stockton currently plays with the worship band Lincoln Brewster; when not doing that, he is producing various projects in his Orange County, California home base.

Tea in ...

like 1,225

Peter Nero: The Laughter and The Challenges

by Victor L. Schermer
February 3, 2010

Part 1 | Part 2

In July 2009, All About Jazz published an interview with legendary pianist and Philly Pops maestro Peter Nero. That interview jumped between his early musical development and his current 30-year tenure as founder and music director of the Philly Pops. There wasn't time then to ask him about what turned out to be the subject of the current interview, the long intervening period including his salad days as a pianist, an ongoing venture ...

like 371

The Power in Music

by Steve Colson
February 3, 2010

Toward the end of last year, the National Endowment for the Arts published results of its study on Public Participation in the Arts. One finding is that over a six-year period, less than 8% of Americans attended jazz events. So annually, out of some 300 million Americans, less than 2,500,000 attend jazz clubs, concerts and festivals and even those numbers may be dwindling. American popular culture has become primarily commercial, often putting the mind in a passive ...

like 218

Jayna Nelson: Bloom of Creation

by Jakob Baekgaard
February 3, 2010

While it is often recognized that music is a matter of both the head and the heart, few artists have taken the statement as literally as the flutist Jayna Nelson. Before the recording of a concert at the legendary Knitting Factory, she instructed her fellow players by handing out copies of a diagram showing the brain's division into two different parts; left and right, the idea being that the musicians would play different parts of the brain, thus achieving a ...

like 544

Paul Dunmall, Tony Bianco and Dave Kane at the Vortex, London, UK

by John Sharpe
February 3, 2010

Paul Dunmall, Tony Bianco and Dave Kane The Vortex London, England January 19, 2010

The band was smoking, they were burning, they were on fire. Just some of the expressions used to denote a truly affecting jazz experience, but not to be taken literally. So imagine the concern of the patrons in north London's Vortex jazz venue as smoke was spotted curling up from the amplifier of bassist Dave Kane not ...

like 205

Emilio Solla & The Tango Jazz Conspiracy: Bien Sur!

by Martin Gladu
February 3, 2010

Things are rarely as they initially appear, as if the eye--and by extension, the written word--is but a trickster requiring closer scrutinizing. Saint Bernard of Clairvaux was indeed right when he claimed “If you wish to see, listen; hearing is a step towards vision."Take for example Bien Sur!, by pianist Emilio Solla and his Tango Jazz Conspiracy band. If the pairing of the stately Argentinean dance with jazz in the same breath is an instantaneous turnoff, read on ...

like 266

Ramona Borthwick: One of Us

by Ian Patterson
February 3, 2010

Pianist Ramona Borthwick is nothing if not generous--offering up over seventy minutes of quality music on this, her second recording as leader. That the music is constantly arresting is testament to the quality of the arrangements and, in equal measure, to the virtuosity displayed by her quintet.

In effect, the quintet becomes at times a sextet as Borthwick employs her voice like an additional wind instrument to wonderful effect, adding rich harmonic and melodic tones to the music. ...

like 358

Tsigoti: Private Poverty Speaks to the People of the Party

by Raul d'Gama Rose
February 3, 2010

If it is hard to believe that the “boomers" of the sixties became the suits of the nineties, it is equally difficult to believe that their energy for political activism lives on today. That is, until hearing the music on Private Property Speaks to the People of the Party, by a group of musicians who call themselves Tsigoti and who are difficult to categorize. That, however, will not diminish the relative success of the band, which originally set out to ...

like 386

Hal Galper: Now Hear This

by Ken Dryden
February 3, 2010

Hal Galper has had a long, distinguished career as a jazz pianist, bandleader, composer and educator. While the pianist has made a flurry of recordings over the past few years, record labels are beginning to mine the wealth of material he produced during the '=1970s. Now Hear This was first issued by Enja in 1977 and subsequently reissued in its original form, though this edition sports a redesigned cover and a bonus track. Galper's inspired quartet includes trumpeter Terumasa Hino, ...

like 238

Terry Waldo: The Ohio Theatre Concert

by Andrew Velez
February 3, 2010

No less a ragtime icon than composer Eubie Blake himself endorsed pianist, musical director, arranger and early jazz scholar Terry Waldo as being “an extension of my own musical self." Waldo's irresistible way with this music is in full glory on this 1974 concert. Blake himself was to have participated, but missed the concert due to illness. In his place Waldo plays a quartet of solo ragtime classics including two Scott Joplin tunes, which were then gaining new popularity through ...