Jazz Articles about Buster Williams

About Buster Williams

Album Review

There was a Steinway in the Zeitlin household in the outskirts of Chicago in the early 1940s. During this time Denny Zeitlin would find his way to the piano playing parental laps and sit at the keyboard, where he, he says: “I would put my little hands on their hands and go along for the ride...and I was just very intrigued by the entire panoply of sounds that were possible with that instrument." (from the 2010 AAJ interview with the ...

Album Review

Denny Zeitlin: Panoply

Read "Panoply" reviewed by Pierre Giroux

by Pierre Giroux
June 14, 2024

Denny Zeitlin's Panoply is a diverse array collection of unreleased performances comprising solo piano recordings at the Piedmont Piano Company in Oakland, California, trio sessions with bassist Buster Williams and drummer Matt Wilson captured at Mezzrow Jazz Club in New York City, and duo pieces with drummer/percussionist George Marsh collected over a decade of home recordings at Zeitlin's Double Helix Studio. The album opens with a trio performance of George Gershwin's “I Was Doing All Right." ...

Album Review

Noah Haidu: Standards II

Read "Standards II" reviewed by Pierre Giroux

by Pierre Giroux
May 6, 2024

On Standards II, pianist Noah Haidu embarks on a captivating journey through the jazz tradition, accompanied by bassist Buster Williams and drummer Billy Hart. The seven tracks were recorded at the Van Gelder studio. The album starts with “Somewhere Over the Rainbow." This track, famously sung by Judy Garland in the 1939 film “Wizard of Oz," became her signature song. The opening, delivered with finesse by Hart, sets the stage for Haidu to build the number from the ground up, ...

Album Review

Noah Haidu: Standards

Read "Standards" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
August 2, 2023

Forty years after the renowned Standards Trio comprised of Keith Jarrett, Gary Peacock and Jack DeJohnette released its debut album, Standards, Vol. 1, New York-based pianist Noah Haidu pays his respects with a similarly named enterprise (sans volume number) featuring bassists Buster Williams or Peter Washington and drummer Lewis Nash, with saxophonist Steve Wilson making it a quartet on four numbers. The Standards Trio's body of work “brought me inspiration, solace and happiness," Haidu writes in the ...

Album Review

Noah Haidu: Standards

Read "Standards" reviewed by Pierre Giroux

by Pierre Giroux
June 23, 2023

A standard is defined as a musical composition that has become a part of the standard repetoire. The conventional wisdom suggests that this definition applies to popular songs of the twentieth century based on the premise that their popularity has lasted beyond the period of their initial publication. Pianist/composer Noah Haidu has taken this to heart on his persuasive album Standards. Accompanied by a cohort of acclaimed sidemen including bassists Buster Williams and Peter Washington, drummer ...

Album Review

Noah Haidu: Standards

Read "Standards" reviewed by Neil Duggan

by Neil Duggan
June 9, 2023

In 1983, Keith Jarrett, Gary Peacock and Jack DeJohnette released the first of their album of standards, Standards Vol. 1 (ECM). The trio's harmonic ideas, insight and collective musicianship went on to become the benchmark for reworking these well- known American songs. Together they recorded 21 albums over three decades. Inspired by that trio's work and celebrating the 40th anniversary of that release, pianist & composer, Noah Haidu, has released Standards. He is joined by bassists Buster Williams ...

Album Review

Jeremy Pelt: The Art of Intimacy, Vol. 2/His Muse

Read "The Art of Intimacy, Vol. 2/His Muse" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
April 30, 2023

Trumpeter Jeremy Pelt's album, The Art of Intimacy, Vol. 2, is a hybrid: nearly one-half jazz quartet (quintet on one track), more than the other half quartet with strings. Strangely enough, the strings are nowhere listed on the album jacket, nor are Pelt's colleagues in his quartet. One has to read an accompanying press release from HighNote Records to learn that they are pianist Victor Gould, bassist Buster Williams and drummer Billy Hart (with guitarist Chico Pinheiro added on the ...