Jazz Articles about Ahmad Jamal

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Ahmad Jamal: A Quiet Time

by Greg Camphire
March 19, 2010

Ahmad Jamal A Quiet Time Dreyfus Records 2010

Pianist Ahmad Jamal continues his career-long winning streak with A Quiet Time. The album expands on a stream of superb, post-mid 1990s releases made with largely the same working band: the Verve label's three-part The Essence series (1996-98), followed by Dreyfus' In Search of Momentum (2003), After Fajr (2005) and the excellent It's Magic (2008), among others. Jamal has achieved living legend status by ...

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Ahmad Jamal: It's Magic

by Graham L. Flanagan
September 17, 2008

Ahmad Jamal remains one of the few elder statesmen left in the ever-shrinking pantheon of certified jazz legends. He has not stopped touring and recording since he burst onto the scene in the early '50s, making music that would later inspire the rising Miles Davis, who cited the pianist as one of his greatest influences.

How fortunate we are then to be blessed with numerous opportunities to hear this national treasure. Joining Jamal is his regular rhythm section of James ...

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Ahmad Jamal: It's Magic

by Ian Patterson
September 4, 2008

That a Japanese mountaineer successfully scaled Mount Everest in May 2008, at the age of 75, is proof that age is no barrier to those with new goals to conquer. If pianist Ahmad Jamal, at 78, were a mountaineer, he too would surely be attempting to scale Everest. There are those, however, who argue that Ahmad Jamal reached a creative peak in the late '50s, but the truth is that Jamal is neither better nor worse than when he recorded ...

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Ahmad Jamal at The Blue Note

by AAJ Staff
July 10, 2008

Ahmad Jamal The Blue Note New York, New York May 11, 2008

Ahmad Jamal both caressed and shook the Blue Note during the second set of his appearance on this Sunday in May. Famous for his use of dynamics (soft- loud contrasts, sudden stops and starts, deferring to his section mates for extended stretches), the piano master gave a bravura display of the state of his art, as it has developed over the ...

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Ahmad Jamal: It's Magic

by Andrew Velez
May 14, 2008

When asked what he's thinking about when he's at the piano, NEA Jazz Master and Kennedy Center Jazz Legend Ahmad Jamal replies, “Those songs that come up on my recordings or my concerts, sometimes I pull some things that are very distant and written years before I was here, things written by Mozart. That's the wonderful thing about music, the ability to interpret the good things beyond the wildest dreams of the composer. I'm doing what I do based on ...

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The Ahmad Jamal Trio: Pavanne For Ahmad

by Ian Patterson
June 4, 2007

Always the musician's musician, Ahmad Jamal's unique approach to the piano has been a continuing source of inspiration for six decades, influencing such giants as Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Keith Jarrett, and a younger generation of keyboardist like Scott Kinsey.

Pavanne for Ahmad is a collection of eighteen of Jamal's earliest recordings for the Okeh and Argo labels between 1951 and 1955. Quite apart from the inherent beauty of Jamal's playing on these tunes, it is interesting to ...

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Ahmad Jamal: The Evolution of the Piano Trio

by Chris Comer
March 30, 2007

Listen

Prior to an upcoming gig in Dayton, Ohio, Chris Comer had the opportunity to interview one of the most influential jazz pianists of all time, Ahmad Jamal. In this interview Jamal discusses his influence on jazz history and many of the players he's worked with over the course of his long and innovative career. In this spirited conversation Chris and Jamal compare views on the traditional jazz trio setting and how it has evolved from the early ...