Home » Jazz Articles » Dave Ballou
Jazz Articles about Dave Ballou
Mario Pavone: Arc Suite t/pi t/po
by AAJ Italy Staff
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, ...
Continue ReadingDave Ballou: Regards
by Ken Franckling
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 ...
Continue ReadingAndrew Hill: A Beautiful Day
by C. Michael Bailey
Dusk was only the beginning to this part of the story...I cannot listen to Andrew Hill’s new big band recording without thinking of him and his band as a relatively well-behaved Sam Rivers and the Rivbea Big Band. Of course, that horribly shortchanges the 65 year-old Chicago native who’s Palmetto debut, Dusk, was considered by many critics as the best jazz recording on the year. Add to that that Blue Note’s Alfred Lion considered Hill his last great ...
Continue ReadingAndrew Hill: A Beautiful Day
by Jack Bowers
"There is plenty going on," designated cheerleader Stanley Crouch informs the reader, on composer / pianist Andrew Hill's latest album, A Beautiful Day, which showcases Hill's sixteen-piece big band in a concert performance last January at New York's famed Birdland nightclub. “With a vision given to great plasticity," Crouch writes, “[Hill] has found his own ways to reinterpret 4/4 swing, the blues, the romantic or meditative ballad, and the Afro-Hispanic rhythms that have almost invariably connected one generation of Jazz ...
Continue ReadingAndrew Hill: A Beautiful Day
by Jon Wagner
Sometimes a live recording captures the dynamism and vibe of a band that's really “on." In ideal situations, the musical energy is obvious right off the bat, continues throughout the set, and winds up on a disc. The listener thinks: “Man, I would love to have been at that gig." Andrew Hill's new release A Beautiful Day is one of those recordings. Hill is a pianist who's been around for a long time and played in many different ...
Continue ReadingDave Ballou: Volition
by C. Andrew Hovan
In his liner notes to this, the second date as a leader from trumpeter Dave Ballou, writer Mark Gardner sagaciously mentions Tim Hagan, John Swana, and Tom Williams among the talented crew of trumpeters who emerged during the early ‘90s. Of course, Ballou also fits into this group and each of these four men have in common the fact that their names are not more widely known. Pushing the envelope much in the same way that Dave Douglas has been ...
Continue ReadingDave Ballou: Amongst Ourselves
by C. Michael Bailey
Free-Garde. Free Jazz and Avant-garde were the same evolutionary answer to Bebop that Bebop was to Swing. Both movements represented a loosening of the previous genre’s harmonic constraints, exploring the near accepted and the taboo. To our ears today, the sound of early Ornette Coleman’s (pre- Free Jazz ) Atlantic recordings does not sound so strange. Miles Davis’ great ‘60s quintet went a long way to opening the ears of a jazz listening public. It was these prodromal influences that ...
Continue Reading
