Home » Jazz Articles » Damani Phillips
Jazz Articles about Damani Phillips
Damani Phillips: No More Apologies
by Troy Dostert
One of the often encountered effects of the pandemic has been to reduce artistic motivations to their most fundamental core. The hunger to make art simply for its own sake, without the encumbrances of marketplace considerations or stylistic categories, has emerged more fully than ever before. We have seen this in the jazz world, with plenty of musicians experimenting with radically innovative approaches to composing, recording and distributing their music. There is often a noticeable defiance accompanying this creativity and ...
Continue ReadingDamani Phillips: The Reckoning
by Victor Verney
Damani PhillipsThe ReckoningSelf Produced2012“Reckoning" is a complex word with many shades of meaning, an apt choice for reedman Damani Phillips' latest CD. As a noun, it signifies (among other things) an objective appraisal built with concrete facts. Used as a verb, the word denotes an educated guess based upon imaginative speculation. In any case, it suggests calculation underpinned by trust--whether in others, oneself, or a Higher Power. All these ...
Continue ReadingDamani Phillips: The String Theory
by Victor Verney
Damani PhillipsThe String TheorySelf Produced2010 The idea of adding strings to a jazz combo has long been a divisive issue among the music's aficionados. It's often disparaged by many purists as a commercial sell-out, similar to the “fusion" concept of marrying jazz with rock. One self-proclaimed hard bop hardliner, Ken Blanchard, has blogged that “strings can make the most obscure bop tenor palatable to a larger audience by packaging him in ...
Continue Reading
