Jazz Articles about Ahmad Jamal

About Ahmad Jamal

Album Review

Ahmad Jamal: Emerald City Nights: Live at the Penthouse

Read "Emerald City Nights: Live at the Penthouse" reviewed by Karl Ackermann

by Karl Ackermann
November 28, 2022

2022 marks the ninety-second year of pianist and composer Ahmad Jamal. An NEA Jazz Master and Grammy winner, in 2007 he was designated a Kennedy Center honoree as a Living Jazz Legend. His first release was The Three Strings (Epic, 1951) and, throughout that decade, he recorded a dozen albums, all in a piano trio format. Of Jamal's approximately seventy recordings, he has employed orchestras, choirs, and larger ensembles but his catalog includes dozens of trio releases. His groundbreaking At ...

Multiple Reviews

Archival Recordings From Ahmad Jamal

by Dan McClenaghan
October 29, 2022

Zev Feldman is a music sleuth, the Hercule Poirot of archival performances. His record label, Jazz Detective, a division of Deep Digs Music Group, here finds Feldman presenting a new discovery of previously unreleased archival sounds—two double CD-sets (also offered on vinyl) of pianist Ahmad Jamal: Emerald City Nights: Live At the Penthouse 1963-1964; and Emerald City Nights: Live At the Penthouse 1965-1966. Jamal is a classically trained prodigy from Pittsburgh who combined his knowledge of the European ...

Radio & Podcasts

Ellington Today - Always Hip

by Russell Perry
April 27, 2021

Every year dozens of top-flight musicians cover tunes from the biggest book in jazz--the Duke Ellington Songbook--with some 1,100 entries. In this hour of Jazz at 100 Today!, we'll listen to a few of the diverse responses to this body of work ranging from pianists Frank Kimbrough, Ahmad Jamal, Fred Hersch and Norah Jones to guitarists Dave Stryker and Mary Halverson, and trumpeter Terell Stafford. Playlist Host Intro 0:00 Frank Kimbrough Trio “Single Petal of a Rose" from ...

Album Review

Ahmad Jamal: Ballades

Read "Ballades" reviewed by Mike Jurkovic

by Mike Jurkovic
December 5, 2019

None other than Miles Davis cited Ahmad Jamal (born 1930) as a stylistic influence. So, as he was approaching his ninetieth birthday, what did this vibrant upstart do to further shake things up? He released his first ever solo album which isn't really a solo album because on three of the exemplarily graceful tracks on Ballades, Jamal duets with his longtime bassist James Cammack. That is what he did. And what we're going to do is sit back ...

Album Review

Ahmad Jamal: Trio & Quintet Recordings With Ray Crawford

Read "Trio & Quintet Recordings With Ray Crawford" reviewed by Chris May

by Chris May
November 20, 2019

This 2xCD reissue comprises three of Ahmad Jamal's early and mid 1950s trio albums plus a fourth recorded in 1960 with a quintet. Between times, Jamal had released the totemic trio set At The Pershing (Argo, 1958), which included the break-out single “Poinciana" (his first, equally lovely, 1955 recording of Nat Simon and Buddy Bernier's tune is included here). Jamal divided opinion in the 1950s. Some critics wrote him off as “just" a cocktail pianist whose touch ...

Album Review

Ahmad Jamal: Ballades

Read "Ballades" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
September 5, 2019

At 89, Ahmad Jamal remains a master of space, time, openness and poetics. Never one to add too much, yet always one to mine a song for all its rich natural flavors, Jamal is an artist whose work speaks with a direct and engaging sweep. His early trio classics became a model of sorts, inspiring Miles Davis and many others, and his latter day, percussion-laced combo dates carry elegance and some swagger in their DNA. Now, showing us that he ...

Live Review

Jazz In Marciac 2019

by Martin McFie
August 9, 2019

Jazz In Marciac Marciac, France July 30, 2019 to August 4, 2019 How does a remote village in South West France end up hosting an international jazz festival for 42 years? The logistics come later, but the answers to most questions about Jazz in Marciac lie in the superb quality of the music. The first four days were each blockbuster performances. First Sting--My Songs, then came Gregory Porter's Nat King Cole and ...