Jazz Articles

like 211

Seabrook Power Plant: Seabrook Power Plant

by Stuart Broomer
December 5, 2009

Seabrook Power Plant seems like a plausible name for a (sometime) power trio that features two brothers named Seabrook, guitarist-banjoist Brandon and drummer Jared (bassist Tom Blancarte is the third member), but one's sense of the band changes with the knowledge that there's a controversial nuclear power station in Seabrook, New Hampshire that bears the same name. It suggests more than mere protest; instead there's a sense in this music of inescapable intimacy with processes of decay and contamination, from ...

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Ravi Coltrane with the Geri Allen Trio at The Iridium, NYC

by Ralph A. Miriello
December 5, 2009

Ravi Coltrane with the Geri Allen Trio The Iridium New York, NY November 21, 2009The Iridium is a major jazz club in the midtown section of New York City. As you approach the club, you can't help but be overwhelmed by the bombardment of intense streaming lights--like a laser light show emanating from adjacent Times Square. On this clear, unseasonably warm evening the club was to feature tenor saxophone icon Pharoah Sanders ...

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Ximo Tebar: Celebrating Erik Satie

by Victor L. Schermer
December 4, 2009

Celebrating Erik Satie represents a creative and stimulating selection of jazz arrangements and improvisations. Ximo Tebar is a respected guitarist and creative force from Spain who has taken the compositions of the eccentric, irascible, and innovative French composer and transmuted them into jazz ensemble performances. Tebar shakes things up while retaining enough straight-ahead jazz to appeal to the masses; it's no accident that “En Habit de Cheval" possesses a clear reference to John Coltrane's magnum opus, A Love Supreme (Impulse!, ...

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Tomasz Stanko Quintet at RNCM Theatre, Manchester

by David McLean
December 4, 2009

Tomasz Stanko Quintet RNCM Theatre Manchester, England October 11, 2009

The fire hinted at in Tomasz Stanko's most recent album, Dark Eyes (2009, ECM), has become the focal point of his new quintet's live operations. Whereas the trumpeter's latest ECM disc ferments with economical restraint and brooding atmosphere, the live incarnation of this material takes the looser and fierier elements of Dark Eyes and brings them to the foreground, creating a new panoramic view of the original source. ...

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David Liebman Group: Live at MCG

by John Kelman
December 4, 2009

It may not possess the same visibility as other longstanding groups like the Dave Holland Quintet or Oregon, and saxophonist Dave Liebman's Group hasn't completely avoided flux. Marko Marcinko replaced drummer Jamey Haddad a few years back, and Phil Markowitz's departure trimmed the group from a quintet to a quartet, even though the keyboardist continues collaborating with Liebman to this day, most recently on Saxophone Summit's Seraphic Light (Telarc, 2008). Bassist Tony Marino and guitarist Vic Juris remain to this ...

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Plunge: Dancing on Thin Ice

by Raul d'Gama Rose
December 4, 2009

There is a plangorous significance to Dancing on Thin Ice. Built on the symbolic thin ice of New Orleans' ecology, it depicts a city that has bounced back from Katrina but only just. It also tells a broader allegorical tale about the planet's teeter-tottering cultural ecology--hence the cover silhouettes of a mastodon and hammerhead shark, representing the strength of all that lives on earth and in the depths of the ocean, and all that makes jazz strong, pliant and enduring. ...

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McCoy Tyner: alone and (in spirit) with SFJAZZ Collective

by J Hunter
December 4, 2009

Usually, the kind of passionate tribute SFJAZZ Collective delivers annually is reserved for artists who are either no longer on the scene, or whose productivity has seriously tanked. However, current honoree McCoy Tyner fits neither of those definitions. The pianist's winter 2009 disc follows the remarkable CD/DVD package Guitars (Half Note, 2008), and is Tyner's third project for his own production entity McCoy Tyner Music. That said, Tyner and the Collective appear side-by-side here; as well as both of them ...

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Oliver Lake, Reggie Workman, Andrew Cyrille & Irene Schweizer: Trio 3 in Amsterdam

by John Sharpe
December 4, 2009

Oliver Lake, Reggie Workman, Andrew Cyrille & Irene Schweizer Bimhuis Amsterdam October 19, 2009

Trio 3 comprises familiar faces on the European concert circuit. The group's earliest release was a concert appearance from the 1992 Swiss Willisau festival, and it has been making regular European tours ever since. Tonight Trio 3 appeared with Swiss pianist Irene Schweizer at Amsterdam's wonderful Bimhuis on the fourth date of a nine-venue European tour.

Each ...

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Take Five With Billy Carrion, Jr.

by AAJ Staff
December 4, 2009

Meet Billy Carrion Jr: Billy Carrion Jr started on the alto saxophone at 9 years old. Music of all kinds was always playing at Billy's home by his salsa singing father, who has an amazing career of his own. After being taught how to read, write, and make a sound out of the horn, Billy Jr took music into his own hands at age 14, when his high school band director opened the instrument closet and asked if ...

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Minamo: Kuroi Kawa - Black River

by Budd Kopman
December 4, 2009

The astonishing double CD Kuroi Kawa--Black River finds pianist Satoko Fujii and violinist Carla Kihlstedt getting together for a second time, after Minamo (Henceforth, 2007). The earlier recording is comprised of two fortuitous live performances that were stunning in how completely at ease these two performers were with each other. Exhilarated by their remarkable chemistry, Fujii and Kihlstedt (now called Minamo) wanted to record again, but also wanted to bring something new to the experience. The result ...