Jazz Articles about Alvester Garnett

Jed Levy: Faces and Places

by Jack Kenny
May 15, 2025

This is a beautiful album that is fired up right from the start. The sound of the tenor is faintly reminiscent of Warne Marsh. There is no seeking after angularity. Jed Levy's way with melody is completely natural and integrated into the quintet, though there are surprises all the way through the improvisations. Jed Levy is not just a tenor player, his compositions have vivacity and a clear structure and, occasionally, an impish charm. The tuneful magic is ...

Wells Fargo Jazz For Teens

by Sanford Josephson
May 2, 2022

Clay Hudson grew up in a family “surrounded by music, and it rubbed off on me." Henry Spencer remembers that in the second grade at St. Luke's School in the West Village, “every student took drum lessons. I was the only one who stuck with it." Hudson and Spencer, both drummers, are two of the 17 student musicians currently enrolled in the New Jersey Performing Arts Center's Wells Fargo Jazz for Teens program. Hudson, a resident of Maplewood, ...

Roseanna Vitro: Sing a Song of Bird

by Pierre Giroux
November 2, 2021

Roseanne Vitro is one of those jazz singers who falls into the category of “I recognize the voice, but I just can't seem to place her." She has more than a respectable discography which stretches back to 1982, when she released her debut album Listen Here for the Texas Rose label. Her fall 2021 album, Sing A Song Of Bird, is a combination of abundance of attitude and perseverance, since it is composed of two separate sessions (one recorded in ...

Andy Farber and His Orchestra: Early Blue Evening

by Jack Bowers
October 5, 2021

Saxophonist Andy Farber's New York-based orchestra came together and cut its teeth as the onstage band for three hundred performances of After Midnight, a Broadway revue that paid tribute to Jazz Age nightclub luminaries from Duke Ellington, Jimmie Lunceford and Count Basie to Harold Arlen, Dorothy Fields and Jimmy McHugh. As one might presume from the orchestra's provenance, echoes of Ellington and Basie can readily be discerned on its first recording since After Midnight closed in 2014--but Farber, who wrote ...

Monika Ryan: Windmills

by Edward Blanco
March 24, 2017

Jazz vocalist Monika Ryan has recorded a series of albums as leader since 2000 with the sensuous and audacious Windmills, a tribute to the lyrics of composers Alan and Marilyn Bergman, one of her latest projects. Voicing a repertoire of beautiful love songs and ballads, Ryan caresses the lyrics of each song with a measure of emotion and taste making for a vocal jazz album that's a pleasure to hear often. Supporting her crisp vocal instrument are a ...

Paul Kendall: Rhapsody

by Jim Santella
September 1, 2000

Saxophonist Paul Kendall leads several different quartets throughout this latest session of warm standards. As the album's title implies, it's all about melodies and rich harmony. However, Kendall makes sure throughout that there's plenty of space for everyone to stretch out. Averaging eight minutes per track, the program features Kendall's romantic tenor saxophone improvising over familiar chord changes. His crystal-clear tone and light-fingered technique set the mood so that the others are able to contribute accordingly.

Notable is pianist Matthew ...