Jazz Articles about Ben Williams

Ben Williams at Hamilton Live

by Wendy Ross
February 5, 2019

Ben Williams Hamilton Live Ben Williams Birthday BashWashington D.C. December 27, 2018 Hamilton Live is a trendy performance venue located below The Hamilton restaurant in Washington, DC, mere blocks from the White House. It was the holiday season between Christmas and the New Year, an appropriately festive time for a birthday party. The man of the hour, bassist Ben Williams, was throwing his annual birthday bash and it was so intimate ...

Oleg Kireyev & Keith Javors: The Meeting

by Edward Blanco
May 17, 2016

Performing together since 2007, Russian saxophonist Oleg Kireyev and Philadelphia-based pianist Keith Javors formed a solid quartet they eventually led to the studio for their debut album Rhyme & Reason (Inarhyme Records, 2010). The Meeting is their follow up recording with a program of four originals and three re-imagined tunes from The Great American Songbook delivered in a tasteful post-bop style. Interestingly enough, it was Kireyev who discovered Javors while surfing the internet and cemented their friendship while ...

by Ian Patterson
April 9, 2014

Nine years after the Pat Metheny Group crowned its mammoth The Way Up (Nonesuch, 2005) tour before 100,000 people at the Montreal Jazz Festival, it seems increasingly unlikely that Metheny will reconvene his main vehicle, not now with a vibrant new group pushing him compositionally and slaying audiences. Or does it? In a 2012 interview with All About Jazz , drummer Antonio Sanchez--who has worked closely with Metheny for a dozen years--said of the PMG: “everybody is craving another go ...

Pat Metheny Unity Group: Kin (←→)

by John Kelman
January 28, 2014

Strangely enough, the release of Kin () may be the one that most polarizes longtime fans of guitarist Pat Metheny. There are those who feel that, beginning with 2005's last recording with his then-longstanding Pat Metheny Group, that he'd become too complex, too chops-heavy and too distanced from the accessible music of recordings like Travels (ECM, 1983) and Still Life (Talking) (Nonesuch, 1987). He further distanced himself from a number of his core constituents with Orchestrion (Nonesuch, 2010), and his ...

Ben Williams: The Effect of Sound

by Daniel Lehner
August 23, 2012

It's continuously perplexing that Ben Williams did not set out on playing the bass first. Forced to pick the most attractive string instrument amongst the cellos and violins, the 7th grade aspiring guitarist ended up picking the instrument that he, now in his upper twenties, is in massively high demand for and is unsettlingly proficient in. Williams' accolades hit a high peak in 2009 after his win at the untouchably prestigious Thelonious Monk Jazz Competition and he currently counts unique ...

Ben Williams: State of Art

by AAJ Italy Staff
January 20, 2012

State of Art è un disco nel quale il bassista Ben Williams riversa a piene mani tutte le sue passioni musicali, che spaziano dal jazz in senso stretto all'hip-hop, dal gospel al R&B; raggiungendo una fusione interessante, per certi versi originale, e piena di spunti creativi. La tracklist si snoda attraverso undici passaggi, che conoscono gli inneschi di riconoscibilità melodica del pop/rock nell'iniziale “Home," la profondità espressiva di derivazione funk di “Moontrane," il rap di “The Lee Morgan Story" (con ...

Alex Brown: Pianist

by Edward Blanco
October 1, 2011

With a little help from Cuban-born saxophonist Paquito D'Rivera the jazz world heralds the entrance of 22 year-old Alex Brown, capturing but a glimpse of his talents on a monster recording debut simply entitled Pianist. It was actually D'Rivera's bassist, Oscar Stagnaro,who began to gig with pianist around the Boston area, ultimately introducing Brown to D'Rivera, and the rest is history. Taken with Brown's skills on the instrument and his understanding of Latin music beyond Afro-Cuban rhythms, D'Rivera took him ...