Jazz Articles about Dave Ballou

About Dave Ballou

Album Review

Dave Ballou & BeepHonk: The Windup

Read "The Windup" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
October 3, 2018

Highly regarded trumpeter Dave Ballou and his band recorded this outing live at the Baltimore venue The Windup Space, where bassist Adam Hopkins organized weekly concerts in 2011. With its debut, the quartet combines briefly stated structural components with hearty doses of improvisation, featuring embryonic guitar hero, Washington D.C. native Anthony Pirog (Janel & Anthony, The Messthetics), as drummer Mike Kuhl handles the asymmetrical pulses and swelling breakouts. The album captures the musicians performing three extended works. Pirog's ...

Album Review

Dave Ballou: Quadrants (for solo trumpet)

Read "Quadrants (for solo trumpet)" reviewed by Alberto Bazzurro

by Alberto Bazzurro
May 1, 2018

Dave Ballou è un trombettista di cinquantacinque anni (il 22 aprile) del Rhode Island con all'attivo, a partire dal 1997, undici album a suo nome con a fianco musicisti del calibro di Michael Formanek, Cameron Brown, Tony Malaby, Randy Peterson, Drew Gress e svariati altri, nonché incisioni a firma dello stesso Formanek (il bellissimo The Distance, ECM del 2016), Satoko Fujii, Dave Liebman e il nostro Andrea Centazzo (diversi a testa), e ancora Gunther Schuller, Andrew Hill, Maria Schneider (Allégresse) ...

Album Review

Satoko Fujii Orchestra New York: Fukushima

Read "Fukushima" reviewed by Karl Ackermann

by Karl Ackermann
December 1, 2017

Satoko Fujii's Orchestra New York has been together since their 1997 debut South Wind (Leo Lab/Libra). A “super group" by any standards, it has remained largely intact over the course of twenty years, bringing the ensemble to its latest release, Fukushima, a memorial suite. The Fukushima nuclear accident was caused by a major earthquake and a subsequent tsunami and was the worst such incident since the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. Fujii was in Tokyo at the time, in 2011. There were ...

Album Review

Satoko Fujii Orchestra New York: Fukushima

Read "Fukushima" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
November 22, 2017

In 2011 an earthquake set into motion the events that would create a partial meltdown of fuel rods in the reactors in the nuclear power plant in Fukushima, Japan. Radiation was released. The effects are still felt, and will be for decades (at least)--an especially troubling situation for the only country to have experienced the initially catastrophic and ultimately corrosive and malignant aftermath of a nuclear attack. Satoko Fujii, the Japanese pianist/composer/band leader, has something to say about ...

Album Review

Dave Ballou: Solo Trumpet

Read "Solo Trumpet" reviewed by Giuseppe Segala

by Giuseppe Segala
March 6, 2016

Dave Ballou si inserisce in modo del tutto personale in quel filone di trombettisti che indaga il proprio strumento in senso lato, ne trae sonorità inedite attraverso lo studio di articolazioni e procedure peculiari, ne cerca un ampliamento del vocabolario e delle espressività. Un filone che, in senso cronologico, ha origine con Bill Dixon, passa per Leo Smith e trova un culmine altamente significativo nel lavoro di Herb Robertson. Altri musicisti delle generazioni successive hanno percorso questa ...

Album Review

Mario Pavone: Arc Suite t/pi t/po

by AAJ Italy Staff
December 7, 2010

L'incisione di questo nuovo splendido gruppo celebra al meglio i settant'anni di Mario Pavone, uno dei contrabbassisti chiave degli ultimi tre decenni d'avanguardia: lo abbiamo visto collaborare a lungo nelle formazioni e nei progetti di Paul Bley, Bill Dixon, Anthony Braxton, Marty Ehlrich e costituire, negli anni novanta, un proficuo sodalizio con Thomas Chapin. I suoi gruppi attuali (come i quartetti Totem e ARC o il Tenor Trio) includono nomi significativi del jazz più avanzato come il sassofonista Tony Malaby, ...

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Album Review

Dave Ballou: Regards

Read "Regards" reviewed by Ken Franckling

by Ken Franckling
August 15, 2005

The best bands create collectively. You can tell when that's truly happening by their comfort in subtle comping--or in laying out altogether. Which is not to say they can't play with combined fire when it is called for. That's the key, and what you'll hear throughout trumpeter Dave Balllou's latest recorded adventure. In addition to being a fixture on the Big Apple jazz scene, a member of both Andrew Hill and Maria Schneider's large ensembles and the ...