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Jazz Articles about Chris Gestrin
Steve Kaldestad: Live at Frankie's Jazz Club
by Edward Blanco
A Port Moody, British Columbia-based tenor saxophonist and educator at Capilano University, Steve Kaldestad is one of the most in-demand musicians in the Canadian jazz scene and Live at Frankie's Jazz Club is his fourth album on the Cellar Live label. Like most musicians affected by the pandemic, working during these trying times has been limited and cherished when possible. Inspired by the compliments and praise received after a previous performance at Frankie's Jazz Club in Vancouver, BC, the saxophonist ...
Continue ReadingSteve Maddock: The Blues Project
by Pierre Giroux
In the mid 1960's, there was a Greenwich Village, NYC pop band called The Blues Project which was primarily informed by folk, rhythm & blues, jazz and pop music of the day. One of their early success was entitled “Flute Thing," a tune from the group's 1966 album Projections (Verve / Folkways). Keyboardist / vocalist Al Kooper, a founding member of The Blues Project, wrote “Flute Thing." He went on, in 1967, to found the pop-rock band Blood, Sweat & ...
Continue ReadingNightcrawlers: Do You Know A Good Thing?
by Pierre Giroux
A nightcrawler is defined as a member of a fictional subspecies who are born with superhuman abilities. It is hard to imagine this is the definition tenor saxophonist Cory Weeds had in mind when he brought this band back together for a recording session. Possibly, he might have been thinking about the funky organ-based recordings exemplified by the Blue Note (1963) recording entitled Never Let Me Go with organist Shirley Scott, along with tenor saxophonist Stanley Turrentine, conguero Ray Barretto, ...
Continue ReadingJerry Cook Quartet +: A Walk in the Park
by Jack Bowers
While some young lions can hardly wait to enter a recording studio and show the world what they have, a few older cats prefer to wait a while to make sure they get it right the first time. Veteran saxophonist Jerry Cook is one of those cats. Walk in the Park is Cook's first album under his own name. He is in his mid-fifties, and has gigged with some of the best musicians on the scene, especially in western Canada, ...
Continue ReadingChris Gestrin: After the City Has Gone: Quiet
by AAJ Italy Staff
“Non mi piace parlare di musica perché, come ogni forma d’arte, essa si relaziona in maniera differente con ciascuna persona“. E in effetti ascoltando After the City Has Gone: Quiet, ultimo lavoro discografico del pianista, compositore ed ingegnere del suono canadese Chris Gestrin, verrebbe da seguire alla lettera l’affermazione che apre le stringate note di copertina dell’album. Conviene lasciar perdere parole e possibili interpretazioni e lasciarsi cullare dalle onde sonore che Chris in solitario o accompagnato in duo/trio da un ...
Continue ReadingChris Gestrin: After the City Has Gone: Quiet
by Jerry D'Souza
Back in 2004, Chris Gestrin (piano, prepared piano, percussion) went into a studio in Vancouver to record his music. He had a dream and he wanted to realize it with musicians that he had long wanted to play with and those that had made a mark on the improvised music scene. Some of it was written, most of it was improvised.
Improvisation is a process. It comes off best when there is empathy between the musicians. ...
Continue ReadingChris Gestrin / Ben Monder / Dylan van der Schyff: The Distance
by Tom Greenland
An elaborative collaboration, The Distance--featuring Chris Gestrin (prepared & unprepared piano), Ben Monder (eclectic guitar), and Dylan van der Schyff (percussion)--is an expansive set, demonstrating the instant and infinite affinity possible when like musical minds meet. Recorded at the 2004 Vancouver International Jazz Festival, the CD documents a fast and freely composed concert of chamber jazz.
The opening “Ferns, with Monder's spacious intro of fade-in quartal chords, kicks into “Treacle, a fast-paced note-fest of incisive legatos and descending scalar staircases, ...
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