Jazz Articles about Chad Taylor

About Chad Taylor

Album Review

James Brandon Lewis, Chad Taylor: Live In Willisau

Read "Live In Willisau" reviewed by Vic Albani

by Vic Albani
February 25, 2021

Il set finale dell'edizione 2019 del festival di Willisau in Svizzera (uno degli appuntamenti di assoluto riferimento del jazz contemporaneo della stagione festivaliera europea) è tra quelli da ricordare. Ovvio che per far sì che questo accada i protagonisti dello stesso debbano essere “a livello" e se, come in questo caso, si chiamano James Brandon Lewis e Chad Taylor è allora facile comprendere il perché di tanto riscontro e successo. Oltre a improvvisazioni e brani firmati dai due citati, brani ...

Extended Analysis

Soundpath

by Victor L. Schermer
January 2, 2021

Muhal Richard Abrams (1930-2017) was a revered pianist, composer and teacher of great capability and range who, in addition to his own achievements, inspired and influenced many jazz musicians in both the mainstream and avant-garde categories. Largely self-taught as a result of a personal decision to follow his own path, and early on pursuing church music, big band, blues, bebop and avant-garde jazz in his home city of Chicago, he grasped music from its roots, and so was able to ...

Album Review

Rob Mazurek / Exploding Star Orchestra: Dimensional Stardust

Read "Dimensional Stardust" reviewed by Karl Ackermann

by Karl Ackermann
December 10, 2020

Composer, multi-instrumentalist, and visual artist Rob Mazurek has made his Exploding Star Orchestra the centerpiece of his larger groups. In this formation, he finds ample room to channel his disparate influences such as Sun Ra and Bill Dixon, and the distinctions he's absorbed as a global citizen. On Dimensional Stardust Mazurek and a dozen collaborators present an energetic, always changeable, genre-less mélange of styles held together by imagination and daring. The imposing Exploding Star Orchestra includes flautist Nicole ...

Album Review

Eric Revis: Slipknots Through a Looking Glass

Read "Slipknots Through a Looking Glass" reviewed by John Sharpe

by John Sharpe
November 25, 2020

On Slipknots Through a Looking Glass, bassist Eric Revis helms a five strong unit to experimental ends juxtaposing emotionally ambiguous abstraction with gut punch drive. To cover the bases he unites saxophonists Bill McHenry and Darius Jones from the quartet which waxed In Memory Of Things Yet Seen (Clean Feed, 2014), with the pianist Kris Davis from Sing Me Some Cry (Clean Feed, 2017), along with drummer Chad Taylor who powered both. Joining on two numbers out of 11 is ...

Album Review

David Lord: Forest Standards Vol. 2

Read "Forest Standards Vol. 2" reviewed by Troy Dostert

by Troy Dostert
October 28, 2020

Although his many years spent on the expansive plains of Wichita, Kansas, wouldn't make it likely that guitarist David Lord developed an obsession with the darker recesses of forest life, his music certainly conveys a deep appreciation of that somewhat otherworldly realm. On his Forest Standards Vol. 1 (BIG EGO Records, 2018) and current Vol. 2 follow-up, Lord's song titles reveal a particular fondness for fungi of all kinds—Coltricia, Polypores, and other colorful, quietly growing things which nonspecialists will undoubtedly ...

Album Review

James Brandon Lewis: Molecular

Read "Molecular" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
October 18, 2020

Saxophonist James Brandon Lewis offers up an introductory statement in the album packaging as a preface to the liner notes of Molecular. His train of thought is difficult to follow. He leaves an impression of not being a “normal" person, in the best possible sense of that assessment. It is the impression of a deep-thinking artist working hard to pin down elusive truths, tying molecular biology and “African American quilting, spirituals, jazz, the abstract paintings of Wassily Kandinsky, the molecular ...

Album Review

Eric Revis: Slipknots Through a Looking Glass

Read "Slipknots Through a Looking Glass" reviewed by Vincenzo Roggero

by Vincenzo Roggero
September 28, 2020

Eccola la nuova formazione del contrabbassista Eric Revis, un incontro di storici collaboratori che promette meraviglie. Al quartetto che licenziò nel 2014 In the Memory of Things Yet Seen si aggiunge la pianista Kris Davis già presente nel precedente City of Asylum e nel successivo Sing Me Some Cry (tutti per Clean Feed) e il cerchio si chiude. Il percorso di Revis parte da lontano, l'esperienza iniziale con Betty Carter, la lunga permanenza nel quartetto di Branford Marsalis, ...