Jazz Articles

like 430

James Blackshaw: The Glass Bead Game

by David Rickert
August 19, 2009

Had Ira Gitler not encountered John Coltrane and heard James Blackshaw instead, he might have used his famous “sheets of sound" to describe the guitarist's music. Blackshaw uses his twelve-string guitar to create giant waves of chords that repeat motifs, creating a harmonious and meditative music that is like new age music for the intelligentsia. New age has such a negative stigma that I hesitate to use that word in describing what Blackshaw does, but there's no denying that that's ...

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Take Five With Jon Crowley

by AAJ Staff
August 19, 2009

Meet Jon Crowley: Forward-thinking trumpeter and composer, Jon Crowley was born in Malvern PA, a suburb of Philadelphia, in 1982. He began studying the trumpet at age six with Elin Frazier, a student of Carmine Caruso. While in high school he developed an interest in Jazz and began attending local jam sessions and sitting in with various musicians around Philadelphia. Jon spent the next four years attending Muhlenberg College, studying Jazz with Charles Fambrough and John Swana. After Graduating with ...

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Eddie C. Campbell: Tear This World Up

by Nic Jones
August 19, 2009

Eddie C. Campbell might have been born in Mississippi, but it's his mastery of Chicago blues, and more particularly the west side variant of the form, that he's known for. He's a guitar slinger of the first order too, one of the few who can still get sufficient life out of the blues form, as opposed to resorting to overplaying and histrionics for spurious effect.

He was also Magic Sam's best friend, but that wouldn't amount to much if it ...

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Dave Holland / Gonzalo Rubalcaba / Chris Potter / Eric Harland: The Monterey Quartet: Live at the 2007 Monterey Jazz Festival

by Mark F. Turner
August 18, 2009

The Monterey Jazz Festival has an ongoing rich history of great performances: Louis Armstrong (1958), Miles Davis (1963), Tito Puente & His Orchestra (1977), Shirley Horn (1994) and many others. MJF's 50th anniversary celebration in 2007 continued that honored tradition of swing, resulting in Terence Blanchard's Grammy Award for Best Jazz Instrumental Solo with his performance on Dizzy Gillespie's classic “Be-Bop" by the MJF 50th Anniversary All-Stars. At that same festival, another group of all-stars--the quartet extraordinare featuring bassist Dave ...

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Carlos Franzetti: Mambo Tango

by Raul d'Gama Rose
August 18, 2009

If you are a virtuoso like Carlos Franzetti, there may be several ways to work a piano when performing a solo, or indeed performing solo on this grand instrument. But then again, if you are Carlos Franzetti you can use your God-given abilities to make the instrument come alive to the full range of its myriad melodic, harmonic and rhythmic possibilities. So now the piano is not just a lead voice but a voice with symphonic possibilities. It can replicate ...

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John Kocur: The Smoker

by Bruce Lindsay
August 18, 2009

John Kocur's first album as a bandleader is an enjoyable and varied recording, showcasing not only the alto saxophonist's own emerging talent but also those of band mates Amy Bormet on piano, Oliver Albertini on bass and C.V. Dashiell III on drums. Washington D.C.-based Kocur produced the album as well as composing all of the tunes. The compositions are mainly straight-ahead and clearly influenced by the playing of past masters such as Johnny Hodges and Cannonball Adderley, ...

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The Jazz Romeo of 46th Street

by Sam Newsome
August 18, 2009

The New York City jazz scene in the 1980s experienced an influx of young musicians from all over the world, looking to get a slice of “The Big Apple." Among them was an adventurous 22-year-old saxophonist and flutist from Italy named Roberto Romeo who--after selling most of his belongings--came to New York for what he thought was going to be a short visit before making his way down to Rio de Janeiro where he was going to study Brazilian music. ...

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Take Five With Calvin Mark Smith

by AAJ Staff
August 18, 2009

Meet Calvin Mark Smith:Born and raised in the New England area, Calvin showed an early proclivity for percussion. Although he spent time on other instruments, he always returned to drums. In and out of various genres and bands throughout his life, he finally settled on music production and recording. To this end, he established a production/publishing company--SmithWorks Music.Instrument(s):Drums, keyboards, percussion.Teachers and/or influences?Very eclectic taste in music.I ...

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John Patitucci Trio: Remembrance

by Troy Collins
August 18, 2009

Grammy-winning bassist John Patitucci's trio recording Remembrance, a heartfelt ode to his heroes and mentors, is the realization of a longstanding dream. Featuring saxophonist Joe Lovano and drummer Brian Blade, this stripped-down trio originally recorded as a quartet with pianist Brad Mehldau on Patitucci's Communion (Concord, 2001). The seeds for this date were sown when an unplanned piano-less rehearsal for the Communion sessions revealed the trio's affinity.

Containing all original tunes, Remembrance is Patitucci's seventh recording for Concord ...

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Tom Abbs & Frequency Response: Lost & Found

by Jerry D'Souza
August 18, 2009

Tom Abbs is a multi-instrumentalist who, besides violin and didgeridoo, plays bass, tuba and cello on this CD. He has enlivened the free jazz scene in New York, not only through his collaborations with Cooper-Moore and Steve Swell among others, but with his music as well. He thinks with a vivid imagination and as such injects his compositions with melody, free falling notes, jazz harmony and a picturesque development. The last may well spring from his role as film-maker.