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Danny Grissett: Travelogue
by David Weiner
On Travelogue, pianist Danny Grissett leads a trio through a rich set of performances distinguished by his evocative themes, diverse song structures, and lovely, dancing approach to the keyboard. Grissett's inventive and highly interactive bandmates are drummer Bill Stewart and bassist Vicente Archer. This is the trio's third Grissett-led outing, and Archer has accompanied the pianist on all seven of the recordings he's led. Grissett composed most of Travelogue's tracks. His tuneful compositions easily deliver on the promise ...
Continue ReadingDanny Grissett: Whisper Not
by John Chacona
One of the enduring mysteries of jazz is also one of its most salient criteria: the hookup between bass and drums. Like Justice Stewart's quote about pornography, it is hard to define but impossible to miss when you hear it. By now, Vicente Archer and Bill Stewart have something very special going on, and Danny Grissett was wise to tap into it. Equally hard to define is what Ethan Iverson calls the “adult tempo." Whatever it means, it is surely ...
Continue ReadingPeter Erskine: Vienna to Hollywood: Impressions of E.W. Korngold & Max Steiner
by Jack Bowers
From Vienna to Hollywood is versatile drummer Peter Erskine's ardent homage to the (mostly) film music of the renowned Academy Award-winning Viennese composers Erich Wolfgang Korngold and Max Steiner, who wrote some of filmdom's most memorable themes during Hollywood's Golden Age in the decades from 1930 to 1960. To transpose their film scores to the jazz genre, Erskine uses a talented group of performers from Vienna's JAM Music Lab University (where he serves as artist-in-residence), supplanted on two numbers by ...
Continue ReadingPeter Erskine & The JAM Music Lab All-Stars: Vienna to Hollywood
by Peter Erskine
Hollywood called... ...and Max Steiner was the first of this dynamic duo to answer, arriving there in 1929, initially working for the RKO Studios as an orchestrator and then as a composer. This was not his first affiliation with Hollywood, however; he functioned as Fox Studio's musical director, adding live music to silent films presented in New York theaters where he had already established himself on Broadway. The call to come west must have triggered an urge as primal as ...
Continue ReadingAlvin Queen: The Jazzcup Café Blues
by Pierre Giroux
Alvin Queen, the legendary drummer who astounded audiences as a child prodigy when he sat in with John Coltrane at Birdland at age twelve, delivers a riveting live performance from Jazzclub Domicile in Pforzheim, Germany, in May 2019. In this eight-track session, Queen is accompanied by Jesse Davis on alto sax, Danny Grissett piano, Dezron Douglas bass, along with percussionist Cesar Granados on a couple of tracks. The set list is a satisfying mix of the familiar and the fresh, ...
Continue ReadingJim Rotondi: Finesse
by Jack Bowers
Finesse is trumpeter Jim Rotondi's ninth recording as a leader but his first using a full orchestra including strings. The band and string section are from Austria, where Rotondi presently lives, performs, and teaches, and each one is quite good. As for Rotondi, besides playing superb trumpet--open or muted--he wrote every song on the album save for two brief “introductory" pieces by Jakob Helling who was the arranger on every number. As if that many instruments weren't ...
Continue ReadingTom Harrell: Number Five
by John Kelman
"If it ain't broke, don't fix it," they say, and since coming to HighNote in 2007, trumpeter Tom Harrell has lived by that old adage, utilizing the same quintet for its auspicious debut, Light On, and three subsequent recordings, culminating in 2011's outstanding Time of the Sun. Number Five continues Harrell's winning streak with the same line-up, but if each successive recording has reflected the ongoing growth of one of today's most compelling small groups--the chemistry deeper and the interaction ...
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