Jazz Articles

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Take Five With Min Rager

by AAJ Staff
October 29, 2009

Meet Min Rager: At the Montreal International Jazz Festival during that same year, her Quintet was nominated for the Grand prix de jazz General Motors. Also that year, Min's Trio (featuring Andre White on drums and Alec Walkington on bass) performed at Montreal's L'OFF Festival de Jazz where she was the recipient of the Best New Artist award. In 2008 Min received a commission from CBC to compose a jazz suite for 2 pianos. The work, lasting 10 minutes, was ...

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Chuck Owen & The Jazz Surge: The Comet's Tail: Performing the Compositions of Michael Brecker

by Larry Taylor
October 29, 2009

What better way to commemorate Michael Brecker than with a CD by a hard-driving big band playing his compositions. Brecker, the great tenor saxophonist died in 2007. His music and talent will be long remembered, and Chuck Owen & the Jazz Surge have put together a wonderful selection of arrangements, starring some of today's best of players.

Owen, University of South Florida jazz composition professor, conceived this project in conjunction with USF. Owen says that the goal was re-envisioning Brecker's ...

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Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original

by Larry Reni Thomas
October 29, 2009

Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original Robin D.G. Kelley Free Press ISBN: 0684831902 2009 Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original is a meticulously documented, yet easy-to-read chronicle of the roller coaster life of pianist and composer Thelonious Monk. It took Robin Kelley, a professor of History and American Studies at The University of Southern California, 14 years to complete, and is a sometimes humourous, but often ...

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The Vandermark 5: Annular Gift

by Mark Corroto
October 28, 2009

The Vandermark 5's Annular Gift is its most accessible and swinging recording to date. Recorded live (one reason) in Krakow, Poland, the quintet has come together (reason two) as a true aggregate of players.

This is their fifteenth official release (there have been some CD-Rs and compilation discs) and third for the Polish label Not Two. The others were the sprawling and ultimately satisfying 12-CD collection of live dates at Alchemia in 2004 (since Alchemia, cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm replaced trombonist ...

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Bobby Bradford: Self-Determination in the Great Basin

by Clifford Allen
October 28, 2009

Born in Cleveland, Mississippi in 1934 and raised between Dallas and Los Angeles, trumpeter Bobby Bradford began playing with Ornette Coleman in Los Angeles in the 1950s, and replaced Don Cherry in an unrecorded Coleman quartet during the early 1960s. However, the most significant partnership in Bradford's musical life was with the clarinetist and composer John Carter (1928-1991), with whom he worked and recorded from 1969 into the 1980s a very different brand of free-bop. Now a professor at Pomona ...

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Tord Gustavsen Ensemble and the Kit Downes Trio at The Forum

by Bruce Lindsay
October 28, 2009

Tord Gustavsen Ensemble, Kit Downes TrioThe ForumNorwich, UKOctober 18, 2009Pianist Tord Gustavsen is one of the more cerebral composers and musicians in contemporary jazz. His music is beautifully written and played--engaging, delicate and atmospheric--and although it always seems to be performed with restraint it can nevertheless develop a groove of its own, especially in the hands of Gustavsen's new Ensemble. Their gig, in the atrium of Norwich's Forum, was part of a major British tour. ...

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Amanda Carr: Common Thread: Amanda Carr and the Kenny Hadley Big Band

by Nicholas F. Mondello
October 28, 2009

If vocalist Amanda Carr were a place, she would probably be Rodeo Drive, Chicago's Magnificent Mile, or New York's elegant 57th Street. With Common Thread, she validates the fact that she has the vocal elegance, phrasing sophistication, premier jazz chops, and the sheer class to back up that hypothesis. Complemented beautifully here by Kenny Hadley's cooking Big Band (comprised of some of Boston's finest “beans"), Carr embarks on a savvy, swinging tour of some of the better ...

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Jared Gold: Supersonic

by Chris May
October 28, 2009

The organ trio, back in the day at the sharp end of sonic technology--electric organs! electric guitars! special effects!--sounds in 2009 the most dated of hard bop retentions. Compare Jimmy Smith's Blue Note collection, A New Sound - A New Star, recorded in 1956, with many new millennial outings in the style, and try to find any substantial differences. The biggest change is that what once must have sounded thoroughly cutting edge now sounds revivalist, even quaint.

Modern ...

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The Charles Tolliver Big Band Live at The Iridium Jazz Club

by Dave Kaufman
October 28, 2009

The Charles Tolliver Big BandThe Iridium Jazz ClubNew York, NYOctober 17, 2009Charles Tolliver leads a modernist 16 piece big band that pushes the envelope of contemporary orchestral jazz sounds. The Big Band played a four night stand at the Iridium Jazz Club and I was fortunate to catch the second set on Saturday night. The Iridium is situated in Midtown Manhattan, just a few blocks away from Time Square, the tourist corner of the world. ...

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Take Five With Leanne Weatherly

by AAJ Staff
October 28, 2009

Meet Leanne Weatherly: Leanne self-produced her first album, Chocolate and Roses, and has co-produced her three song EP as well as her newest release Go and Find.. She has also produced and directed her own music videos including her Album Preview Video currently available for public viewing on You Tube.“Leanne Weatherly is the next major voice to watch out for - she's got clarity, passion,and fun arrangements that anyone would enjoy, all wrapped up in a very bright ...