Jazz Articles

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Herb Alpert & Lani Hall Live: Anything Goes

by Edward Blanco
January 7, 2010

Though trumpet legend Herb Alpert and wife Lani Hall have been together for more than three decades, it's hard to believe that Anything Goes is their very first album together. A musician and entrepreneur, Alpert is best known for his work in the 1960s with his Tijuana Brass, five number one hits, eight Grammy Awards and fifteen gold albums. As co-founder of A&M Records, Alpert's impact on music has been even greater. After signing Sergio Mendes and Brasil '66 to ...

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Makajodama: Makajodama

by Glenn Astarita
January 7, 2010

The debut from this Swedish quartet, including guest hornists and percussionists, offers a refreshing glimpse into the sometimes, demure world of progressive rock. The press verbiage draws parallels to King Crimson and Univers Zero, amid a few other cutting edge and irrefutably unique prog outfits, partly due this unit's acute fusion of thorny time signatures and use of strings. Yet Makajodama brings another compelling element into the grand schema, sparked by Mathias Danielsson's incorporation of psychedelic guitar parts. At times, ...

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The Rebirth of Real Jazz in Richmond

by Ken Hohman
January 7, 2010

I'm seated at The Camel restaurant on a cool Sunday evening. As my taste buds soak up the malty taste of our fair city's own Legend Brown, my ears soak up the intoxicating sounds of two saxophones, alto and tenor, intertwining and advancing across a melodic line that has more turns than Riverside Drive along the James River. It's a complicated piece, but the two musicians in the Scott James Project, Jason Scott and Rick Reiger, handle it with skill ...

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Marketing Jazz and the Public Perception

by Chuck Anderson
January 7, 2010

[ed. note: Chuck Anderson has had an amazingly diverse career in music. He has worked successfully as a professional guitarist, composer, author, clinician and lecturer. He has owned and directed music schools, recorded a dozen CDs, written twenty books on music, run a production company, written for national magazines and currently maintains a busy music consulting business. Drawing on all these facets of the music business, Chuck will be writing a monthly column for us called “The Art ...

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Evan Parker: set: For Lynn Margulis

by Raul d'Gama Rose
January 6, 2010

Lynn Margulis' Serial Endosymbiosis Theory, which began making its rounds in the scientific community in 1966 as The Origin of Mitosing Eukaryotic Cells and graduated into Symbiosis in Cell Evolution, published in 1981 pushed outward forever in dramatic manner the boundaries relating the evolution of micro organisms. Margulis' quest for the absolutely honest and exciting developmental evolution in the nucleus of “the Noble Kernel" continues to shake up the foundations of biology and revolutionize evolutionary thought. Looking ...

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Glenn Cashman / UAB SuperJazz / Elliot Deutsch Big Band / Russ Spiegel Jazz Orchestra

by Jack Bowers
January 6, 2010

Glenn Cashman And the Southland Big Band! Primrose Lane Music 2009

Even though Glenn Cashman's superlative Southland Big Band makes its home (technically) south of the Mason-Dixon Line, it is more than a few miles removed from cotton fields, mint juleps and the Mississippi River--to be more precise, in the greater Los Angeles area. There's no discernible southern partiality to the music either; it's pure-blooded straight-ahead big-band jazz, written (for the most part) and ...

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Nicolas Masson Parallels: Thirty Six Ghosts

by Glenn Astarita
January 6, 2010

Switzerland reared tenor sax ace and composer Nicolas Masson draws inspiration from Yoshitoshi Taiso's (1839-1892) woodblock paintings. Hence, emotion and impressionism is projected via the power of jazz music, as Masson and his quartet render a poly-angled view that incorporates the artist's lucid imagery and contrasting colors. With Thirty Six Ghosts, the saxophonist leads a concentrated group-focused program, steeped within structure and loosely devised implementations.

Masson and his accomplices dish out driving jazz-rock pulses with large doses of ...

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Joey Pero: Breaking Sound Barriers

by Nicholas F. Mondello
January 6, 2010

The great lead and jazz trumpeter Bobby Shew tells his students that “talent is a matter of breaking barriers." While trumpeter Joey Pero might have brilliantly selected and covered “Defying Gravity" from Broadway's Wicked on his breakthrough CD, Resonance (Resonance Music Group, 2009), Pero has been defying and utterly smashing performance barriers all his life. What would you expect from a man who, still in his mother's womb no less, was given the chance to “witness" and leap in response ...

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Greg Reitan: Antibes

by Dan McClenaghan
January 6, 2010

Los Angeles-based pianist Greg Reitan's debut, Some Other Time (Sunnyside Records, 2009), introduced a surprisingly mature talent. With a mix of American Songbook gems, some fine originals, a surprise or two, and a couple of jazz standards--all rendered with a distinctively sure and elegant touch--the pianist announced himself as a top tier talent in the crowded and ever-vibrant piano trio field.Antibes, Reitan's sophomore effort, is more of the same.Recording with the same interactive trio he employed ...

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Samo Salamon Trio feat. Michel Godard & Roberto Dani: Live!

by Matt Marshall
January 6, 2010

Samo Salamon Trio feat. Michel Godard & Roberto Dani Live! Samo Records 2009

The tuba has experienced something of a resurgence as a featured jazz instrument in the last couple of years. Far from its New Orleans' roots, where the twizzled piece of metal mainly thumped its beats in the background, folks like Dave Douglas, Donny McCaslin, Bobby Bradford and John Ellis have moved the tuba (or sousaphone) to the frontlines, recognizing its ability--in ...