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Jon Bentley: Go Ahead!
by Jack Bowers
There is really nothing to censure on Vancouver, Canada-based tenor saxophonist Jon Bentley's latest album, Go Ahead! On the other hand, there is nothing of any import that sets it apart from other straight-ahead quartet sessions aside from the fact that Bentley employs an organ and guitar to replace the usual piano and bass. Bentley plays the tenor well, hanging for the most part in a comfortable and pleasing groove, the like of which can be said ...
Continue ReadingTom Keenlyside: Third Street Wobble
by Jack Bowers
Tom Keenlyside, a saxophonist from Vancouver, British Columbia, who has performed in his native Canada and around the world with a who's who of jazz and pop musicians, leads an impressive quintet on Third Street Wobble, his seventh recording as a leader or member of various groups, on many of which his flute has been in the foreground. Keenlyside stays with the tenor saxophone here, sharing front-line duties with trumpeter Brad Turner in a group whose other able ...
Continue ReadingPaul Rodgers: Midnight Rose
by Doug Collette
It is a travesty that Paul Rodgers is not a household name. Despite considerable commercial success with English bluesrockers Free ("All Right Now") and Bad Company, plus his high-profile associations with Queen and guitarist Jimmy Page (in the band dubbed 'the Firm'), the British-Canadian vocalist, musician & songwriter remains a somewhat unsung figure in the annals of contemporary rock. The rather short playing time of his sixth solo album--roughly thirty-two minutes--is something of a metaphor for the under-the-radar ...
Continue ReadingCory Weeds: Home Cookin'
by Jack Bowers
On Home Cookin', his second recording with an eleven-piece “little big band," tenor saxophonist Cory Weeds is doing the best he can. Really. As Weeds writes in the liner notes, the plan was to rehearse the band for two nights at Frankie's Jazz Club in Vancouver, Canada, home to Weeds and most of the band's personnel, then to convene at the Warehouse Studio on Sunday to record. Arriving at the club on Friday evening, Weeds found to his dismay that ...
Continue ReadingCory Weeds: Home Cookin'
by Pierre Giroux
Cory Weeds, a prominent figure in the contemporary jazz scene, has made a remarkable statement with his Little Big Band's latest album Home Cookin'. The session showcases a vibrant collection of compositions/arrangements carefully curated to resonate with his personal journey, including those by Horace Silver, Thad Jones and Oliver Nelson, which are essential to him for a variety of reasons. The band comprises ten of his favorite world-class Vancouver, BC-based musicians. These previously mentioned influential tracks ...
Continue ReadingNightcrawlers: Get Ready
by Pierre Giroux
The common thread between the Nightcrawlers and nightcrawler earthworms is that they both come out at night, and while the former is at home in a jazz club before a live audience, the latter is feeding on decaying organic material. Some may say that is a distinction without a difference. Nevertheless the latest nightly ritual for the Nightcrawlers is called Get Ready and it was recorded live at Frankie's Jazz Club in Vancouver B.C. This confident sextet is centred around ...
Continue ReadingSteve Kaldestad: Live at Frankie's Jazz Club
by Jack Bowers
On his fourth album for Cellar Music, western Canada-based tenor saxophonist Steve Kaldestad plays “Con Alma." He also plays con alma--in English, “with soul"—not only on Dizzy Gillespie's paean to human life's animating principle but throughout a more than hour-long concert at Frankie's Jazz Club in Vancouver, wherein he leads an exemplary quartet whose members are among the most accomplished jazz musicians in that lovely British Columbia province and beyond. Kaldestad's partners in the onstage enterprise are ...
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