Jazz Articles

like 225

Erica Lindsay / Sumi Tonooka: Initiation

by Jakob Baekgaard
January 23, 2010

While the discography of saxophonist Erica Lindsay is yet relatively modest, she still plays with the knowledge and authority of a seasoned musician. Initiation sees her teaming up with an old acquaintance, pianist Sumi Tonooka, and together they make a profoundly swinging and poetic music whose life-affirming quality it is hard to deny. “Mari" immediately grabs the attention, setting forth some infectious rhythms, courtesy of the late drummer Bob Braye and preeminent bassist Rufus Reid. While Braye ...

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Django at 100

by Stuart Broomer
January 23, 2010

Call it Django or Gypsy jazz, Hot Club, swing or Manouche (another name for gypsy), it's a style that hits you immediately--blazing, hard-picked runs played on a hyper-resonant, flat-top guitar (sound-holes are oval or D-shaped, never round), its intense momentum propelled by bass and rhythm guitar(s), often in tandem with violin, clarinet or accordion and working through standards and rhythms that belonged to the Swing Era. It may have been the first jazz style to develop fully outside the United ...

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Conrad Herwig's Latin Side All Star Band: Intensity On A Cold City Night

by Robert Dugan
January 23, 2010

Conrad Herwig's Latin Side All Star BandThe Blue NoteNew York, New YorkJanuary 11, 2010“Que Viva Miles, 'Trane, Herbie & Wayne."For more than a decade, trombonist Conrad Herwig has created a highly identifiable niche in contemporary jazz with his series of Latin Side CDs, which began with the startling The Latin Side of John Coltrane (Astor Place, 1996). That Grammy-nominated recording revealed how naturally Coltrane compositions could be adapted to smartly appropriate Afro-Caribbean arrangements. ...

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Pat Mallinger: Dragon Fish

by Matthew Warnock
January 23, 2010

Dragon Fish is a dazzling collaboration between saxophonist Pat Mallinger and pianist Dan Trudell. Though Mallinger's name is featured on the cover, there really is no clear leader on the record as both musicians play off of each other as they engage in an emotional and intellectually stimulating musical conversation. Exploring myriad combinations of timbre, tone and texture, Mallinger and Trudell bring forth just about every possible nuance that could be found in a woodwind-piano duo situation. Even without the ...

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Albert Ammons, Pete Johnson, Cripple Clarence Lofton, Meade Lux Lewis; Henry Brown, Speckled Red: Boogie Woogie Kings

by Nic Jones
January 23, 2010

Some reviews write themselves and this is one of them. The good people at Delmark have recently acquired the master tapes to Paul Affeldt's Euphonic Sound label and any amount of work that might have taken is more than justified by the quality of the music.

The majority of these sides, no longer hidden from history, were recorded in Chicago in 1938 or '39. The six by Cripple Clarence Lofton are amongst them and reveal a player for whom the ...

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Reaching Into The Unknown 1964-2009

by A. Henkin
January 23, 2010

Reaching Into The Unknown 1964-2009 Jacques Bisceglia/Steve Dalachinsky softcover; 440 pages ISBN: n/a Rogue Art 2009

Jazz and modern poetry seem ideally suited, in temperament if not exactly aesthetic. Though it is designed to mimic the cadences of a freeform improvisation, jazz poetry is still a constructed art form with the benefit of the editorial process. But that does not diminish how much poetry has been directly inspired by jazz ...

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Memphis Nighthawks: Jazz Lips

by Jerry D'Souza
January 23, 2010

The Memphis Nighthawks took their name from another band that had a brief recording career in 1932. Neither of the bands were from Memphis, nor is the music on this CD. That is of little consequence in the whole scheme of things.

The group was co-founded by multi-reed player Ron DeWar and trumpeter Steve Jensen who drew most of the members from the University of Illinois Jazz Band. The youth of the band belies the outcome; traditional jazz ...

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Bill McBirnie: Mercy

by Hrayr Attarian
January 23, 2010

Flutist led jazz records are quite infrequent, which makes one of quality all the more a find. Toronto-based Bill McBirnie's Mercy is mostly comprised of standards from a variety of jazz styles. The only original composition is the title track, by pianist Robi Botos. The diversity in styles, from trad jazz to Latin, does not affect the unity of the recording's theme, but creates a unique multifaceted whole thanks to McBirnie's versatility and superlative musicianship. McBirnie is ...

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Petra van Nuis / Andy Brown: Far Away Places

by Jack Huntley
January 22, 2010

The combination of a female vocalist backed by a solo guitar is not a heavily- exploited instrumentation, and there's a reason for that--it's very hard to pull off. While Ella Fitzgerald's recordings with Joe Pass are a perhaps the gold standard, overwhelmingly the piano is the stand-alone accompaniment instrument of choice for singers. But vocalist Petra van Nuis and guitarist Andy Brown's wonderful Far Away Places is a reminder of the beauty this form can achieve, and how the inherent ...

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Eddie The Rat: Food For The Moon Too Soon

by Glenn Astarita
January 22, 2010

Composer, multi-instrumentalist and bandleader Peter Martin describes the methodology of his band, Eddie The Rat, as “head music for your feet." Here, the Bay Area twelve-piece unit is captured live in 2001 at Artist's Television Access in San Francisco. And when citing Martin's use of various instruments, it is worth noting that some of them include birdcage, magazine rack, and sermonizing. Percussion also serves as a vital component of the group's impetus, to complement the six primary vocalists. Martin's methodology ...