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Dave Burrell Full-Blown Trio at October Revolution Festival
by Victor L. Schermer
Dave Burrell Full-Blown Trio October Revolution Festival Christ Church Neighborhood House (Great Hall) Philadelphia, PA October 6, 2018 It isn't often one attends a jazz piano trio concert where the group plays a single totally improvised composition for about an hour. It would seem as daunting to the audience to hear as for the musicians to play. But pianist Dave Burrell is a masterful pioneering musician who recently earned the ...
Continue ReadingThe 23rd Edition Of New York’s Vision Festival
by Frank Rubolino
If one had to pick just one word to describe New York's Vision Festival, it would be consistency. This late May 2018 event, which has been presented annually since 1996, has consistently offered exciting and inspired improvised music, poetry, and dance executed by both seasoned, well-established artists as well as younger, emerging talent. They all have one goal in mind--to produce art that is challenging, stirring, and most importantly, new. In recent years, the Vision Festival has honored one artist ...
Continue ReadingDave Burrell: The Crave
by John Sharpe
A leading free jazz pianist playing the music of Jelly Roll Morton? It's not as far-fetched as you might think. Morton has attracted a number of interpreters from the supposedly extreme end of the spectrum, from Sun Ra of course, first issued on Live At The Gibus (Atlantic, 1975), to Chicago trio Air on Air Lore (Arista Novus, 1979) and Japanese pianist Aki Takase's New Blues (Enja, 2012). The Crave makes explicit Dave Burrell's connection to older piano styles. Even ...
Continue ReadingDave Burrell, Bob Stewart: The Crave
by Alberto Bazzurro
Concepito in forma di LP, con un lato A ("The Crave," “Popolo Paniolo," “I Am His Brother," “Pua Mae 'Ole") e un lato B ("New Orleans Blues," “Spanish Swat"), questo curioso album, risalente addirittura al 1994 (13 giugno, live a Colonia), affianca due musicisti all'epoca ben più di oggi attivi sulla scena del jazz--diciamo così--post-free in una singolare rilettura, in realtà un tributo, nei confronti del grande Jelly Roll Morton. Sei i brani in scaletta, tre del ...
Continue ReadingDave Burrell, Steve Swell: Turning Point
by Maurizio Zerbo
Indagando ancora una volta nella memoria storica statunitense, Dave Burrell e Steve Swell continuano a trarre spunti musicali dalla guerra civile americana. Ricontestualizzati con eccelsa raffinatezza e gusto musicale, la strumentazione e i temi marziali dell'800 vengono letteralmente ristrutturati nel segno dell'ottica jazzistica. È stata così compiuta un'operazione discografica intelligente oltre che inusuale, rivolta a collegare la mappa musicale statunitense a cavallo tra due secoli. La versatilità e la classe musicale fanno dei sette brani un concentrato ...
Continue ReadingDave Burrell: Pianist Navigating the Windward Passages
by Victor L. Schermer
Dave Burrell is a master pianist and composer who encountered the avant-garde in the 1960s and has been following his own independent path ever since. He combines classical and jazz elements that are both “inside" and “outside" the mainstream. The title of a poem by J.V. Cunningham, “The Metaphysical Amorist" characterizes much of his playing, which is “romantic" (amorous) in both the sense of that era in music history and the influence of the American Songbook, and yet penetrates the ...
Continue ReadingDave Burrell / Steve Swell: Turning Point
by John Sharpe
Although firmly associated with the avant-garde, pianist Dave Burrell often harkens back to pre-bop styles in his execution. On Turning Point he explicitly acknowledges such sources in his writing too. Perhaps that's appropriate in a sequence inspired by the American Civil War -what Burrell terms a war to end slavery. While composer in residence at Philadelphia's Rosenbach Museum where this recital was performed, Burrell researched the people and events of the conflict. The collection here is actually the third in ...
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