Jazz Articles about Carl Maguire

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Carl Maguire's Floriculture: Sided Silver Solid

by Lyn Horton
August 29, 2009

The second recording for pianist Carl Maguire's group Floriculture, Sided Silver Solid, presents a refined sensibility for instrumentation that demonstrates its potential for a larger, even orchestral, application. Accompanied by the members of his quintet, violist Stephanie Griffin, reedman Oscar Noriega, bassist John Hebert and drummer Dan Weiss, Maguire exercises his capacity for charting sonic courses that show strength, ingenuity, solidity and, most of all, character.

At no time, do any of the instruments sink to a place of Insignificance, ...

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Carl Maguire: Floriculture

by Donald Elfman
July 2, 2006

Here's a downtown jazz quartet that knows the patterns and traditions of the mainstream but has used it to create something quite different. Maguire's compositions are complicated and dense, but not inaccessible. Reflecting grooves, minimalism and a strong sense of melody, this music demands repeated listenings, if only due to the fact that the listener can't quite take it in all at once. Start immediately with “Egocentric, which, Maguire says, pits a static ostinato against a morphing ...

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Carl Maguire: Floriculture

by Budd Kopman
May 22, 2006

Floriculture is clearly a jazz record and does not seem to inhabit Between the Lines' usual niche at the point of collision between modern classical composition and jazz improvisation, perhaps because of the standard jazz band instrumentation. The first delicate notes of Carl Maguire's piano in “Egocentric" repeat odd phrases that move in and out of phase with each other, but when the rest of the band enters, powerfully amplifying and filling out the theme, you know ...

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Carl Maguire: Floriculture

by Nic Jones
March 26, 2006

The fact that this quartet is apparently a working band is abundantly obvious. The program of music they perform comes entirely from the pen of Maguire, and such is the organic nature of the band that the impression is of music written with these particular musicians in mind, as opposed to a bassist, an alto saxophonist, etc. Thus, Chris Mannigan's alto sax work is entirely his own, for all of the faint echoes of Anthony Braxton, whilst bassist Trevor Dunn ...