Jazz Articles about Dana Hall

About Dana Hall

Album Review

You enter the music of Chicago bassist/composer Clark Sommers with wary expectations: In its open-ness anything can happen. Dark perambulations pop against lighter propulsions. Dialogues take on thesis, equation and whimsy. Discourse holds its own parlance, gives definition, then allows for civil caucus. Because Ba(sh), a trio defined only by the elementary concept that 1+1+1=3, converse as one on Peninsula. Thereby making Sommers' rather simmering, seven scrutinies welcome respites from the breaking news and insistent chatter that bombards us all ...

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Album Review

Dana Hall: Into The Light

Read "Into The Light" reviewed by John Barron

by John Barron
March 9, 2010

Chicago-based drummer Dana Hall makes his debut as a leader with Into the Light, a provocative quintet recording featuring trumpeter Terell Stafford, saxophonist Tim Warfield, Jr., pianist Bruce Barth, and bassist Rodney Whitaker. Herbie Hancock's “I Have a Dream" opens the session with an explosive punch. Hall's uncompromising intensity makes clear exactly who is leading the date. Along with Barth's punchy Fender Rhodes comping, the drummer steers the tune through an unpredictable course of shifting grooves with dynamic ...