Jazz Articles about Damon Smith

About Damon Smith

Album Review

Damon Smith: Whatever Is Not Stone Is Light

Read "Whatever Is Not Stone Is Light" reviewed by Mark Corroto

by Mark Corroto
July 8, 2020

A well-known standing joke instructs a concert goer that the proper time to have a conversation during a performance is to wait for the bass solo. Maybe that joke is funny because it does happen all too often. Try as one might, though, it is impossible to get side-tracked during this solo bass performance by Damon Smith. This COVID-19 virus solo recording follows Smith's previous live solo date Winter Solos for Robert Ryman (Balance Point Acoustics, 2019) and presents an ...

Album Review

Pandelis Karayorgis Double Trio: CliffPools

Read "CliffPools" reviewed by Mark Corroto

by Mark Corroto
March 20, 2020

Visit any dog park and you'll notice canines need no instruction on how to play together. Chasing the ball, chasing each other, or investigating a pond is quite instinctive for our furry friends. Apologies for equating the master musicians heard on CliffPools with a pack of dogs, but a ferocious struggle for dominance this is not. Boston-based pianist Pandelis Karayorgis had the idea to merge two of his piano/bass/drums trios into one coterie of kindred spirits. His trio work with ...

Album Review

Henry Kaiser/Steve Parker/Damon Smith/Chris Cogburn: Nearly Extinct

Read "Nearly Extinct" reviewed by Mark Corroto

by Mark Corroto
March 17, 2016

The title of this improvising free jazz quartet's release Nearly Extinct, is a reference to the current state of instant composing. The cover lists various players (Albert Ayler, Cecil Taylor, John Coltrane), Bands (ICP Orchestra, SME, AMM, AACM, ISKRA 1903), and refers to differing scenes from San Francisco to London and Wuppertal. That title is certainly a misnomer. If we think of it in terms of popular music, free jazz or free improvisation was a stillborn child back ...

Album Review

Sandy Ewen / Damon Smith / Weasel Walter: Sandy Ewen / Damon Smith / Weasel Walter

Read "Sandy Ewen / Damon Smith / Weasel Walter" reviewed by Eyal Hareuveni

by Eyal Hareuveni
October 17, 2012

This uncompromising set of free improvisation challenges the very basic concepts of what music is. As seminal improvising guitarist Henry Kaiser writes in his illuminating liner notes: “forget about melody, harmony and rhythm for the moment and listen to everything else that you can hear going on." And there is much going on in terms of structural, timbral, spatial and conceptual complexity in these eight non-idiomatic, on-the-spot improvisations. Houston-based Sandy Ewen experiments with the electric guitar with ...