Jazz Articles about Adam Benjamin

Dave Douglas: Keystone Live in Sweden

by John Kelman
October 4, 2006

In the early days of silent film, scores were played live, most often by a single musician--simplifying the response to the on-screen activities. In recent years artists like guitarist Bill Frisell and clarinetist Louis Sclavis have upped the ante by combining composed music with improvisation on silent film scores for small ensembles, making the coordination of sight and sound much more challenging.

Trumpeter Dave Douglas' Keystone (Greenleaf, 2005) is another contemporary entry, a two-disc release including a DVD of the ...

Dave Douglas: Keystone

by AAJ Italy Staff
February 2, 2006

Le strategie sonore di Dave Douglas si semplificano in questi anni recenti, nella dialettica tra quintetto acustico e gruppo elettrico, gruppi eccellenti curati con particolare meticolosita'. Escono ora per la Greenleaf, diretta in proprio, due CD in contemporanea: questo Keystone, ed un “live" del vecchio quintetto col repertorio di The Infinite. Keystone e' pensato come sonorizzazione di un'opera del regista Roscoe Arbuckle, grande autore dell'epoca del muto, ingiustamente sottovalutato anche alla luce di una condanna penale che lo escluse da ...

Todd Sickafoose Group: Blood Orange

by Nathan Haselby
December 27, 2005

The young composer and bassist Todd Sickafoose waited a full five years to put out his second release, Blood Orange, following his debut, Dogs Outside (2000). Considering the advances he has made as a composer and arranger, the wait is worth it. Sickafoose still writes pensive mainstream jazz enriched by free improvisation, but his tighter new group makes possible writing which demands no less from individual players and gets much more from the whole.

To be fair, Dogs Outside was ...