Jazz Articles about Bob Belden

Bob Belden: Black Dahlia

by AAJ Staff
May 1, 2001

Black Dahlia, without a doubt, will be remembered as the most ambitious jazz recording of the year. Rather than a blowing session, influential though blowing sessions may be, Bob Belden's Black Dahlia is an extended story-telling, romantic and fatalistic suite that was three years in the making. In addition, over sixty musicians wre required to fill the symphony orchestra that accomplishes Belden's vision.When Belden's last grand project, a 1993 interpretation of the opera Turandot, was blocked by Giacomo ...

Bob Belden: Black Dahlia

by Craig Jolley
April 1, 2001

Black Dahlia comes off better felt than listened to. In the liner notes Bob Belden describes his programmatic suite as a portrait of a mysterious, romantic loner who lived out her brief life through movies in post-WWII Hollywood. He borrows “moody" techniques from 1940's film score writers and gives them a jazzy spin.

Miles Davis and Gil Evans serve as the primary jazz inspirations. The most prominent soloist, trumpeter Tim Hagans, evokes Miles' stark, blue sound with and without harmon ...

Bob Belden: Black Dahlia

by AAJ Staff
April 1, 2001

Black Dahlia, without a doubt, will be remembered as the most ambitious jazz recording of the year. Rather than a blowing session, influential though blowing sessions may be, Bob Belden's Black Dahlia is an extended story-telling, romantic and fatalistic suite that was three years in the making. In addition, over sixty musicians wre required to fill the symphony orchestra that accomplishes Belden's vision.When Belden's last grand project, a 1993 interpretation of the opera Turandot, was blocked by Giacomo ...

Bob Belden: Black Dahlia

by AAJ Staff
April 1, 2001

Black Dahlia, without a doubt, will be remembered as the most ambitious jazz recording of the year. Rather than a blowing session, influential though blowing sessions may be, Bob Belden's Black Dahlia is an extended story-telling, romantic and fatalistic suite that was three years in the making. In addition, over sixty musicians wre required to fill the symphony orchestra that accomplishes Belden's vision.When Belden's last grand project, a 1993 interpretation of the opera Turandot, was blocked by Giacomo ...

Kenny Drew Jr.: Passionata

by Jack Bowers
May 1, 1998

Beautiful music, beautifully recorded and played. Pianist Kenny Drew Jr.'s love for and debt to his late father are apparent with almost every note he plays on Passionata, the title selection of which was drawn from a sketchy outline that young Kenny found in his father's desk after Drew Sr. passed away in 1993. This is basically Kenny's trio augmented on four tracks ("Dark Beauty," “Serenity," “Evening in the Park," the reprise of “Passionata" that closes the session) by a ...