Jazz Articles about Ben Riley

About Ben Riley

Album Review

Kenny Barron: So Many Lovely Things: Live in Brecon

Read "So Many Lovely Things: Live in Brecon" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
June 1, 2026

Pianist Kenny Barron (b. 1943) has paid his dues, working in the bands of Yusef Lateef and Dizzy Gillespie as well as a three-year stint in trumpeter Freddie Hubbard's band. His work as a leader has also soared. His first album under his own name was titled You Had Better Listen (Atlantic, 1967). That title offered good advice.As with most top-tier jazz artists who boast 50-plus-year careers, he has played thousands of concerts, and many of these have ...

Album Review

Thelonious Monk: Bremen 1965

Read "Bremen 1965" reviewed by Pierre Giroux

by Pierre Giroux
December 5, 2025

The first official release of the Bremen concert, carefully remastered from the original tapes, is more than just an archival curiosity; it is a revelation. Recorded on an evening characterized by generous tempos and a relaxed exchange, Bremen 1965 reaffirms Thelonious Monk and his experienced quartet as they pay their most fundamental tributes: the uneven poetry of his time, the crystalline bite of Charlie Rouse's tenor saxophone, the steady ballast of Larry Gales's bass, and Ben Riley's propulsive subtleties on ...

Album Review

Roseanna Vitro: Listen Here

Read "Listen Here" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey

by C. Michael Bailey
January 26, 2021

Roseanna Vitro is a singer's singer in the same way as Sarah Vaughan and Carmen McRae. She is a studied practitioner of the jazz vocal arts, an interpreter, performer, educator. Her repertoire, taste, and vocal chops are beyond compare. Vitro's ability has evolved horizontally and vertically over 14 recordings and nearly 40 years. The singer's most recent release, Tell Me The Truth (Skyline, 2018), was thematically devoted to the rich music of the American South where Vitro capably migrates from ...

Album Review

Thelonious Monk: Palo Alto

Read "Palo Alto" reviewed by Mike Jurkovic

by Mike Jurkovic
September 18, 2020

Earth-shattering? The best live Thelonious Monk recording ever? Who knows? Probably not. But it is Monk, so Palo Alto, comes to us with all the scholarly fandom brouhaha we accord these wonderful little things that gratefully drop in our laps from troubled time to troubled time. For anyone not paying attention to the jazz chatter of late, the backstory to Palo Alto thumbnails broadly like this: It is 1968 which, as it just so happens, is another troubled ...

Album Review

Alice Coltrane: Live At The Berkeley Community Theater 1972

Read "Live At The Berkeley Community Theater 1972" reviewed by Chris May

by Chris May
June 11, 2019

Conventional belief holds that Alice Coltrane was the dreamy, mellifluous partner in John Coltrane's late period, out-there sonic explorations. The truth is otherwise, as attentive listening to the recordings the two Coltranes made together in 1966 and 1967 demonstrates. The misapprehension stems from the gentler albums Alice made for Impulse in the first few years following her husband's passing. A Monastic Trio (1968), Huntington Ashram Monastery (1969), Ptah, The El Daoud (1970), Journey In Satchidananda (1971) and World Galaxy (1972) ...

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Interview

Ben Riley's Monk Legacy

by Russ Musto
November 19, 2017

This interview was first published at All About Jazz on November 7, 2006. Ben Riley is one of the most richly experienced drummers in jazz today. The Georgia-born drummer came up in Harlem during the second wave of bebop in the fifties, playing with Randy Weston and others. He was at Minton's with saxophonist Eddie Lockjaw" Davis and anchored the saxophonist's two-tenor quintet with Johnny Griffin, but his true claim to fame came during his years with iconoclast ...

Album Review

Ben Riley: Grown Folks Music

Read "Grown Folks Music" reviewed by Raul d'Gama Rose

by Raul d'Gama Rose
May 27, 2012

Ben Riley is best-described as a drummer who has always been the epitome of great taste, elegance and almost certainly possessed of a higher musical intelligence. There is no better recommendation for this than the fact that Thelonious Monk hired him as a drummer, but if further proof were requested , then all that needs doing would be to spin Grown Folks Music, this eloquently bluesy albeit seemingly short session with a rising star on the saxophone, Wayne Escoffery. The ...