Jazz Articles about Bill Carrothers

Bill Carrothers Trio: A Night at the Village Vanguard

by Warren Allen
June 13, 2011

Bill Carrothers Trio A Night At The Village Vanguard Pirouet Records 2011 Pianist Bill Carrothers could not have picked a better venue to cut a trio recording in. Whether it's the inimitable acoustics of the Village Vanguard, or simply the sheer number of essential records cut there over the decades shaping listeners' ears, recordings made at the Greenwich Village cathedral with the red awning somehow sound an extra bit more like jazz. That ineffable ...

Bill Carrothers Trio: A Night At the Village Vanguard

by C. Michael Bailey
June 3, 2011

The sonic character of New York City's Village Vanguard is one of sound as memory. There is a pillow of pungent warmth and familiarity surrounding the sounds captured that can be heard on the early recordings, like Sonny Rollins' A Night At the Village Vanguard (Blue Note, 1957), Bill Evans' The Complete Village Vanguard Sessions, 1961 (Riverside, 2005), and John Coltrane's The Complete 1961 Village Vanguard Recordings (Impulse!, 1997), as well as the later recordings like Tom Harrell's Live At ...

Bill Carrothers Trio: A Night at the Village Vanguard

by Dan McClenaghan
May 30, 2011

Bill Carrothers Trio A Night At The Village Vanguard Pirouet Records 2011 Maybe everything that goes down in New York's Village Vanguard should be documented. The history of live albums recorded at the legendary venue, going back to the early days, includes standout sets by pianist Bill Evans and saxophonists Sonny Rollins, Dexter Gordon and John Coltrane. An update into the new century finds the likes of pianists Brad Mehldau, Fred Hersch and Jason ...

Bill Carrothers: See the Piano, Play the Piano

by Dan McClenaghan
May 25, 2010

"I want to keep my fingers in a state of chaos...I try to keep my fingers stupid."----Bill Carrothers, jazz pianist.

The quest for chaotic and stupid finger seems an unusual one for a jazz pianist. But then, a conversation with Bill Carrothers reveals an unusual man; one who is to-the-point and forthright to a fault, perhaps, and one who's words spill from his mind unfiltered by anyone's expectations. Much the way his playing on Joy Spring ...

Bill Carrothers: Joy Spring

by Dan Bilawsky
May 11, 2010

Tribute albums often come in the form of imitative musical gestures from musicians of a like-instrument--such as a saxophonist paying tribute to John Coltrane by trying to copy his style or specific mannerisms. But pianist Bill Carrothers has crafted a different type of homage with Joy Spring, using the piano trio format to flesh out some malleable constructions of songs associated with trumpeter Clifford Brown.

Five Brown tunes and four songs by pianist Richie Powell--who performed with the trumpeter and ...

Bill Carrothers: Joy Spring

by Dan McClenaghan
April 30, 2010

Pianist Bill Carrothers has narrowed his often expansive focus. Where the marvelous and career-defining Armistice 1918 (Sketch Records, 2004) concerned itself with the scope of World War I, and I Love Paris (Pirouet Records, 2005) explored popular songs from the twenties through the forties, Joy Spring zeros in on a smaller slice of a more recent history: the music of died-too-young hard bop trumpeter Clifford Brown.Brown (b.1930, d. 1956), was a young phenom who enjoyed only a four-year ...

Bill Carrothers: Keep Your Sunny Side Up

by John Kelman
April 5, 2007

Bill Carrothers is one funny guy. One look at his website is enough to establish that, but for further proof one need only look as far as Keep Your Sunny Side Up. That's not to say Carrothers can't be pensively lyrical or downright abstract. But on this follow-up to I Love Paris (Pirouet, 2005), Carrothers demonstrates a near mischievous playfulness as he deconstructs a number of well- and lesser-known standards.

The first of two versions of the title track opens ...