Jazz Articles about Benny Green

About Benny Green

Album Review

Pianist Benny Green has not been in the studio leading a recording date since his collaboration with Russell Malone, Bluebird (Telarc, 2004). Far from stagnating, Green has most recently been found providing support on recordings like Hilary Kole's You Are There (Justin Time, 2010), Kenny Burrell's Be Yourself (HighNote , 2010) and Anat Cohen's Clarinetworks: Live at the Village Vanguard All this adds up to his attractiveness to Jazz Legacy Productions, a label that specializes in recording ...

901

Profile

Benny Green: Teaching Jazz to the Next Generation

by Victor Verney
June 4, 2006

After exhibiting great potential as a young pianist during his teens on the San Francisco jazz scene, Benny Green, long regarded as one of the most promising wunderkinds of jazz piano, spent his twenties serving apprenticeships with a virtual pantheon of musical giants. During his thirties, Green fulfilled his early promise, making the transition from sideman to a headline act in his own right. Now, in a small college auditorium in Des Moines, the student had become Zen master, and ...

270

Album Review

Benny Green and Russell Malone: Jazz at The Bistro

Read "Jazz at The Bistro" reviewed by Mike Perciaccante

by Mike Perciaccante
February 13, 2003

Russell Malone can play it all -- rock, pop, country, blues, jazz -- you name it. But as anyone who has heard his recording knows, he's most at home (and comfortable) when he's playing jazz. And we as listeners are rewarded with some of the most beautiful sounds, tones and phrasing possible on the guitar. On Jazz at The Bistro, Malone is joined by pianist Benny Green. While live recordings in small rooms (and St. Louis's The Bistro is a ...

276

Album Review

Benny Green: The Place To Be

Read "The Place To Be" reviewed by William Grim

by William Grim
August 1, 2002

Benny Green is one of the most gifted jazz pianists around, and The Place To Be shows off his abilities in a variety of settings. The album starts off with a big band arrangement of “Nice Pants” which at times sounds like it’s based on the changes of “Critic’s Choice,” a tune that was a staple of the Buddy Rich book from the 1960s. It has a time medium tempo swing to it and features an excellent bass solo by ...

325

Album Review

Benny Green: Green's Blues

by Bill Donaldson
July 1, 2001

Benny Green's talent is such that he can adapt to any situation, as proven by the ultimate testing grounds of Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers and Betty Carter's group, not to mention Ray Brown's trio--all of which Green joined. As the aggressive hard bop pianist or the unpredictable Carter's accompanist who slips from one thought to the next within a single phrase, thereby creating special demands for her exceptional pianists, Green could switch from one style to another. And when Green ...

229

Album Review

Benny Green: Naturally

by AAJ Staff
August 1, 2000

On “Naturally", Benny Green offers due respect to several homes that are important to him. No, not a structure. That would be a “house". No, not Berkeley, California, where he grew up. That would be too obvious. In several ways, Green pays tribute to his father's, Bert's, hometown of Pittsburgh. Now, one may not think of Pittsburgh as fertile territory for the development of jazz, at least not from the sometimes myopic view of a coastal metropolis. But Pittsburgh did ...

245

Album Review

Benny Green: Naturally

Read "Naturally" reviewed by Mark Corroto

by Mark Corroto
August 1, 2000

Pity Benny Green. Born 30 years too late, his fantastic piano technique isn’t the stuff of heated debates. The heir to Oscar Peterson’s legacy, Green’s trio work of the 1990s never made one choose sides, like Peterson, Ahmad Jamal, Erroll Garner, and Dave Brubeck fans once did. After a successful run of Blue Note records, Green like Tommy Flanagan and Hank Jones before him settled into the role of sideman. He recorded over a half dozen dates with bassist Ray ...