Jazz Articles about Charles Pillow

About Charles Pillow

Album Review

Here's a formula we've all seen before: take three musicians and let them loose on a program of standards and Great American Songbook chestnuts. It sounds all too simple and pedestrian, right? Guess again. When you're talking about the combined creative forces of multi-reedist Charles Pillow, bassist Jeff Campbell, and drummer Rich Thompson, the potential of said endeavor changes drastically. The whole is most certainly greater than the sum of its parts when those musicians come together as Triocity, and ...

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Album Review

Charles Pillow: Van Gogh Letters

Read "Van Gogh Letters" reviewed by Victor L. Schermer

by Victor L. Schermer
January 9, 2011

Those who like Debussy's Nocturnes will love what this trio does on the crossover Van Gogh Letters. Three master musicians venture into saxophonist Charles Pillow's softly articulated, impressionistic/minimalist tone poems. Inspired by Letters of Vincent Van Gogh, Pillow translates the great artist's phrases and sentences into painterly sounds evocative of a quieter, less-pressured epoch. The trio embarks on a journey through the varied places and moods that the gentle, saintly, and troubled Van Gogh saw and painted with intense beauty ...

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Interview

Charles Pillow: Sound Crafter

by Victor L. Schermer
December 14, 2010

Charles Pillow is a musician's musician who works with diverse ensembles from jazz to pops to classical, small group to large ensemble, straight-ahead to avant-garde. He grew up in Baton Rouge, La., and studied music at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, before eventually settling in the New York City area as a working professional.He has worked with groups, vocalists, and leaders as varied as Dave Liebman, Michael Brecker, Jay Z, Broadway pit orchestras, Mariah Carey and ...

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Album Review

Mike Holober & The Gotham Jazz Orchestra: Quake

by Elliott Simon
March 15, 2009

Duke Ellington's legacy is alive and well with pianist Mike Holober and The Gotham Jazz Orchestra. Holober makes use of the increased musical scope that 17 pieces give him to weave compositional strength within a sound that sways more than swings. Some of the finest jazzers New York City has to offer join Holober for this session. Their individual talents are certainly showcased but the strength of this release is how Holober fits them all together to ...

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Extended Analysis

Charles Pillow: Part 3 - The Planets

by Victor L. Schermer
September 26, 2008

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 Charles Pillow The PlanetsArtistShare2007 This review follows Charles Pillow: Part 1--Crossing the Divide between Jazz and Classical Repertoire, an introduction to the work of the reed player and composer, and Charles Pillow: Part 2--Pictures At An Exhibition (ArtistShare, 2005), a review of another Pillow disc. Gustav Mahler said that a symphony should form a universe. If not ...

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Extended Analysis

Charles Pillow: Part 2 - Pictures at an Exhibition

by Victor L. Schermer
September 25, 2008

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 Charles PillowPictures At An ExhibitionArtistShare2005 This review follows Charles Pillow: Part 1--Crossing the Divide between Jazz and Classical Repertoire, introducing the reed player and composer's work, and is followed by Charles Pillow: Part 3--The Planets a review of a second Pillow disc, The Planets (Artist Share, 2007). Pictures at an Exhibition, made in 2003 but not released until two years later, ...

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Extended Analysis

Charles Pillow: Part 1 - Crossing the Divide between Jazz and Classical Repertoire

by Victor L. Schermer
September 24, 2008

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 While jazz began as a form of entertainment, it has evolved into a more serious musical genre. Its multiple roots in gospel, blues, popular, folk, Caribbean, African, and other world musics give it a complexity and richness tailor-made for extended musical explorations and through-composing. In addition, jazz musicians have made use of the music of Debussy, Stravinsky, Milhaud, Bartok and other classical composers as they search for new ways to ...