Jazz Articles about Dave Say

About Dave Say

Album Review

Daphne Roubini and Black Gardenia: Whiskey Scented Kisses

Read "Whiskey Scented Kisses" reviewed by Pierre Giroux

by Pierre Giroux
May 16, 2026

Whiskey Scented Kisses begins without a grand entrance, just a quiet claim staked in the opening. Vocalist Daphne Roubini does not dwell on nostalgia so much as settle into it, as if the language of the '40s and '50s were simply how she thinks out loud. Around her, the band Black Gardenia moves with unspoken ease. The band includes Paul Pigat on guitar and arrangements, Brad Turner on trumpet and flugelhorn, Stephen Nikleva on guitar, Jeremy Holmes on bass, and ...

Album Review

Angela Verbrugge: Somewhere

Read "Somewhere" reviewed by Katchie Cartwright

by Katchie Cartwright
November 27, 2024

Based in Victoria, British Columbia, Angela Verbrugge keeps a busy schedule as a singer, touring in Canada and farther afield. In addition to performing, she writes songs--jazz songs, new standards--with lyrics that are engagingly personal and funny, containing the occasional acerbic twist. As a lyricist, she often speaks to the quotidian. Her texts are a perfect match for pianist Ray Gallon's boppish compositions. On “Enough's Enough" (Love for Connoisseurs, Gut String Records, 2022), she takes a sloppy lover to task ...

Liner Notes

Angela Verbrugge: Somewhere

by Michael Steinman
April 15, 2024

The proper response to Beauty is an awed admiring silence. So these liner notes should be one word in a large font: LISTEN. But Angela asked me to add a few hundred keystrokes to the project, so here we are. Incidentally, I have chosen to focus on Angela in the midst of the most superb musicians and arrangements. I hope they will forgive me! Angela Verbrugge is a great subversive. Her work is so quietly insinuating that listeners ...

Album Review

Cory Weeds: Home Cookin'

Read "Home Cookin'" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
January 17, 2024

On Home Cookin', his second recording with an eleven-piece “little big band," tenor saxophonist Cory Weeds is doing the best he can. Really. As Weeds writes in the liner notes, the plan was to rehearse the band for two nights at Frankie's Jazz Club in Vancouver, Canada, home to Weeds and most of the band's personnel, then to convene at the Warehouse Studio on Sunday to record. Arriving at the club on Friday evening, Weeds found to his dismay that ...

Album Review

Cory Weeds: Home Cookin'

Read "Home Cookin'" reviewed by Pierre Giroux

by Pierre Giroux
November 26, 2023

Cory Weeds, a prominent figure in the contemporary jazz scene, has made a remarkable statement with his Little Big Band's latest album Home Cookin'. The session showcases a vibrant collection of compositions/arrangements carefully curated to resonate with his personal journey, including those by Horace Silver, Thad Jones and Oliver Nelson, which are essential to him for a variety of reasons. The band comprises ten of his favorite world-class Vancouver, BC-based musicians. These previously mentioned influential tracks ...