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Jazz Articles about Brian Blade
Mike Holober: Canyon
by Dan McClenaghan
Pianist/composer Mike Holober's songs brim with shifting textures and moods, like the color changes wrought by the inexorbably-shifting angles of sunlight playing upon the striations of a canyon wall. Holober spends free time hiking and climbing, and he wrote the title tune for Canyon after a trip to Utah's Paria Canyon, an experience that inspired a song full of seamlessly shifting grooves.Those shifts and changes within a composition – done while maintaining an entrancing accessibility – are Holober's ...
Continue ReadingBrian Blade Fellowship: Perceptual
by Jim Santella
Fellowship lead instrumentalists Kurt Rosenwinkel, Jon Cowherd and Brian Blade work the modern mainstream of jazz through creative impressionism and expressive jams. Saxophonists Melvin Butler and Myron Walden work alongside bass and pedal steel guitar to produce a distinctive set of timbres. They're thrilling from start to finish; and yet, Fellowship is driven by a drummer who prefers to remain in the back seat. Twenty-nine year old Blade builds sonic landscapes based on the nightly news and all else that ...
Continue ReadingBrian Blade Fellowship: Perceptual
by C. Andrew Hovan
Far from your typical young jazz artist, drummer Brian Blade seems almost bent on avoiding classification. He's been found in the studio and/or on the road with such disparate employers as Joshua Redman, Bob Dylan, Seal, and Joni Mitchell. With technical prowess of obvious proportions, Blade is equally reticent about flashy drum displays, content to merely color and prod the composition at hand. All of this is as much apparent in his sideman stints as it is with his two ...
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