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Adam Shulman Septet: West Meets East
by C. Andrew Hovan
Quiet as it's kept, too many of today's finest jazz artists are given short shrift by an industry that seems to value product of a fleeting nature over true craft and a reverence for the jazz legacy. This makes it particularly challenging for a talent like Adam Shulman to break through to a wider audience. A fixture on the Bay Area scene since 2002, the pianist has a knack for accompanying singers such as Paula West and often performs as ...
Continue ReadingAdam Shulman: Just The Contrafacts
by Pierre Giroux
For those who may be scratching their heads about the word contrafact, in the jazz medium it designates a musical composition in which a new melody is overlaid on a familiar harmonic structure. This form really became prominent in the bebop era, where the artists (who were generally short of financial resources) could create new compositions over which they could improvise and record without worrying about paying royalties for copyrighted materials. During the depths of the ...
Continue ReadingZeena Quinn: Going My Way
by Jack Bowers
With so many singers these days competing to tempt the ears of an ever-shrinking jazz audience, success often rests not only on the talents of the vocalist but on the songs he or she chooses to interpret. On Going My Way, San Francisco-based vocalist Zeena Quinn puts her best foot forward on the opening numbers, “Lover" and “So in Love" (it's hard to go astray with Rodgers and Hart or Cole Porter) but it takes her quite a while to ...
Continue ReadingAdam Shulman Septet: West Meets East
by Jack Bowers
The “west" here is represented by San Francisco-based pianist and group leader Adam Shulman, the “east" by the other half-dozen members of Shulman's impressive septet. Even though the reasons that led to the alliance are ambiguous, what matters is the payoff, and that is more than admirable from any vantage point. As if to mirror the ensemble's six-and-one makeup, Shulman wrote six of the album's seven engaging numbers; the seventh (the rapid-fire “Whose Blues") was composed by ...
Continue ReadingIan Carey Quintet + 1: Fire in My Head: The Anxiety Suite
by Dan McClenaghan
Trumpeter Ian Carey's Fire In My Head: The Anxiety Suite opens on a somber note, not with the sense of agitation that the album title suggests. The initial moments of the tune, “Signs And Symptoms," Part 1 of the suite, may initially be addressing the fatigue common to the malady, before his Carey's Quintet + 1 gradually turns up of the momentum in the direction of that anxiety, in manifestations from the leader's horn, followed by an on-edge turn by ...
Continue ReadingAdam Shulman Sextet: Full Tilt
by Jack Bowers
In music, as in life, not every new voice is worth hearing. Here's one that is. Full Tilt, the fifth CD by San Francisco-born and based pianist Adam Shulman's sextet, is a throwback to those halcyon days when bop was king and giants like Diz, Bird, Miles, Max Roach, Hank Mobley, Benny Golson, Horace Silver, Wardell Gray, Lee Morgan, Kenny Clarke, Clifford Brown, Sonny Stitt, J.J. Johnson, Hampton Hawes, Freddie Hubbard, Milt Jackson, Kenny Dorham, Art Blakey, Dexter Gordon and ...
Continue ReadingTake Five With Adam Shulman
by AAJ Staff
Meet Adam Shulman:Adam Shulman has been a staple of the San Francisco jazz scene since he moved to the city in 2002. Before the move, Adam was a student at UC Santa Cruz, where he studied with the great Smith Dobson and trumpeter/arranger Ray Brown. He received his degree in classical performance under the tutelage of Russian pianist Maria Ezerova. Currently, Adam plays regularly with Marcus Shelby, in large and small group contexts, and with Anton Schwartz mostly ...
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