Jazz Articles

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Take Five With Brad Keller

by AAJ Staff
December 16, 2009

Meet Brad Keller: Brad Keller has been a professional musician and educator for over seventeen years. His multi-dimensional musical influences range through Jazz and Blues to Bluegrass and Country and continue through Rock, Classical and many varieties of World Music.In April of 2001 Brad co-founded The Creaking Tree String Quartet. The acoustic quartet also features the work of John Showman (fiddle), Brian Kobayakawa (double bass) and Andrew Collins (mandolin). The C.T.S.Q. debut self titled CD was nominated for ...

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B.D. Lenz: Finding His Own Voice

by Matthew Warnock
December 15, 2009

B.D. Lenz began his musical journey at 14, when he was first inspired to learn to play the guitar. Since then, he has gone on to study with such jazz luminaries as guitarists Mike Stern and Vic Juris and pianist Charlie Banacos. After graduating from the Musician's Institute in Hollywood, California, Lenz finished his formal musical education at the College of New Jersey, where he graduated with honors. Though he finished his scholarly studies years ago, Lenz has furthered his ...

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The 6th Penang Island Jazz Festival: December 3-6, 2009

by Ian Patterson
December 15, 2009

The 6th Penang Island Jazz Festival Bayview Beach Resort Penang, Malaysia December 3-6, 2009

Happy birthday to the Penang Island Jazz Festival, six years old this year! Six years may not seem like a lot, but in small jazz festival terms it probably means that the difficult initial years have been successfully negotiated, a festival team established and a reputation built. The Penang Island jazz Festival has ticked these boxes, even though ...

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Massimo Sammi: First Day

by Mark F. Turner
December 15, 2009

Massimo Sammi's debut draws inspiration from the 2001 motion picture A Beautiful Mind, based on the life of mathematician John Nash. The album's theme is implemented, as the guitarist describes in his liner notes, by Sammi's “musical storyboarding of the film," based on Nash's experiences and theories. While the music's background, which includes free jazz improvisation, is intellectually stimulating, it's thankfully not as complex as Nash's equations in differential geometry. The supporting cast of talented musicians--veterans George Garzone ...

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Ben Goldberg: Go Home

by John Kelman
December 15, 2009

Between the rather eclectic and enigmatic The Door, The Chair, The Hat, The Fact (Cryptogramophone, 2006) and Plays Monk (Long Song, 2007), his characteristically idiosyncratic and unorthodox trio take on the music of Thelonious Monk, clarinetist Ben Goldberg continues to expand his broad musical interests, heard in earlier groups including Tin Hat and New Klezmer Trio. Few American artists other than Don Byron and Perry Robinson have focused so exclusively on this small wooden reed instrument, and while Goldberg's left-of-center ...

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Let's Tribute Ourselves

by Vincent Gardner
December 15, 2009

Like many other jazz musicians, I am fortunate enough to travel all over the globe and present this wonderful music. While I haven't been playing professionally for an extremely long time--only about 15 years--during those years I have seen quite a bit of change in the world and on the jazz scene. Not that it compares with New York of the '30s, '40s or '50s, but, compared to 2009, think of how much more work there was in the late ...

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The Dave Young Quartet: Mean What You Say

by Jerry D'Souza
December 15, 2009

Dave Young has had a long career as a classical music and jazz bassist. Before he found his niche in jazz, Young was the principal bassist with the Winnipeg and Edmonton Symphony Orchestras as well as the Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra. As a jazz musician, he brought his sense of rhythm and intuition to groups led by Oscar Peterson and Oliver Jones, among a host of others. Though he has had a prolific career as a sideman over the last 40 ...

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Prestige Records: The Album Cover Collection

by Larry Taylor
December 15, 2009

Prestige Records: The Album Cover Collection Hardcover; 128 pages ASIN: B002NACXY6 Concord Editions 2009 Prestige Records: The Album Cover Collection has been published in honor of the seminal jazz label's 60th anniversary. The handsome coffee table-sized book would make the perfect gift for many jazz fans--both those who bought the albums in the 1950s and 1960s, and younger listeners who have seen the covers replicated on much smaller CD reissues. ...

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Dave Douglas' Tiny Bell Trio: Constellations

by Chris May
December 15, 2009

When hatOLOGY put it out back in summer 2009, pianist Horace Tapscott's mother lode of groove, The Dark Tree, originally released in 1991, looked like a serious contender for best reissue of the year. It's still a player--but so too is trumpeter Dave Douglas' Tiny Bell Trio's Constellations, which slips under the wire at the eleventh hour. First released in 1995, Constellations catches Douglas on the cusp of elevation to international downtown fame, and Tiny ...

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Brenda Hopkins Miranda: Recuerdos de Granada / Memoirs of Granada

by James Nadal
December 14, 2009

Pianist Brenda Hopkins Miranda did not go to Spain to record an album. She went to study ethnomusicology in the city of Granada, and in the ensuing two years was drawn into the tablao or flamenco dance culture of the city. From listening to the opening flairs of Recuerdos de Granada/Memoirs of Granada it would be a logical assumption that the music chose her. The results of that encounter are heard in this recording.

The music on the record is ...