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Jazz Articles about Anna Webber
Raf Vertessen: LOI
by Glenn Astarita
Since relocating from his native Belgium to New York City, superb drummer and wily composer Raf Vertessen has ingratiated his talents into the region's always burgeoning improv and avant-garde musicscape, performing with upper-echelon musicians, evidenced on this first-rate debut as a leader. Here, the drummer cites influences from the dynamic international contingent of 1960s free/progressive jazz performers who turned conventional jazz frameworks upside down. The drummer's works include budding layers of sound, by using building blocks amid blossoming ...
Continue ReadingColin Hinton: Simulacra
by John Sharpe
It would have been a shame if drummer and composer Colin Hinton's Simulacra, released in 2019, fell through the cracks. On this, his second leadership outing in the wake of Glassbath (Snake And Cornelia, 2018), he captains a crew of current and former Brooklyn-based talent in a mysterious but satisfying set. Hinton merges compositional elements with unfurling interplay which sounds guided in its cohesion, but without any evidence of the joins. As a result the six cuts evolve naturally, but ...
Continue ReadingAnna Webber: Rectangles
by John Sharpe
Canadian saxophonist Anna Webber's quartet provides a second winning entry in Out Of Your Head Records' digital Untamed series, following Nick Dunston's Atlantic Extraction: Live At Threes (2020). Webber calls the band Rectangles after a composition inspired by a sequence of 10-second videos on the YouTube test channel Webdriver Torso which consist of a string of high pitches coupled with images of red and blue rectangles flashing across the screen. If that premise sounds unpromising, the execution is anything but. ...
Continue ReadingRemy Le Boeuf's Assembly of Shadows: Assembly of Shadows
by Angelo Leonardi
Dopo aver debuttato in veste di leader nel 2019 con il ricercato album Light as a World (un sestetto con, tra gli altri, Aaron Parks e Walter Smith III) il 33enne sassofonista e compositore d'origini californiane, presenta un ambizioso progetto orchestrale comprendente la suite “Assembly of Shadows," un'altra sua composizione ("Strata") e una riscrittura di “Honeymooners" di Ornette Coleman. Prima di questi lavori ha condiviso la leadership del gruppo Le Boeuf Brothers col suo gemello Pascal. La ...
Continue ReadingDave Douglas: Engage
by Giuseppe Segala
Nella conduzione della propria etichetta indipendente Greenleaf Music, Dave Douglas ha sempre perseguito criteri di attenzione e rispetto verso lo scambio positivo tra esseri umani, ambiente, forme della convivenza. “Composizioni dedicate all'azione positiva": così il trombettista definisce questo lavoro in dodici brani, facendo riferimento ai mesi dell'anno e alle tonalità musicali della tradizione occidentale. Un CD che si pone in diretta continuità con il precedente Uplift, pubblicato nel 2018, applicando gli stessi criteri programmatici, la stessa partizione in dodici brani, ...
Continue ReadingNew albums from Webber Morris Big Band, Alex Massa, Wayne Wallace, and Vanderlei Pereira
by Bob Osborne
On this show four great albums and some other fantastic music in-between: Wayne Wallace delivers dazzling new compositions and classic jazz standards, using the expanded sonic palette of an orchestra to highlight the strengths of his core conjunto. Underneath it all is an effortlessly instructive survey of Latin rhythms, from the familiar to the arcane, that reflect Wallace's lifelong study of these sounds The Webber/Morris Big Band is an ensemble of eighteen stellar New York improvisers. ...
Continue ReadingWebber / Morris Big Band: Both Are True
by John Sharpe
On Both Are True Canadian composers and reed players Anna Webber and Angela Morris reimagine the language of the big band. They extend the tradition through adventurous arrangements spiced with the unpredictability of improv, by co-opting the nimbleness of a much smaller group, and reveling in non-standard techniques. Webber has already garnered plaudits for the work of her Simple Trio with Matt Mitchell and John Hollenbeck, while Morris' ventures such as the Motel Trio boast a lower profile so far. ...
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