Jazz Articles about David Smith

About David Smith

Album Review

Arturo O'Farrill and the Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra: Four Questions

Read "Four Questions" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
May 25, 2020

The Four Questions addressed by composer / pianist Arturo O'Farrill's Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra on its latest album were first posed in 1903 by W.E.B. DuBois in his book The Souls of Black Folk and are answered herein by the esteemed educator / historian / social activist Dr. Cornel West. For the record, the questions are “what does integrity do in the face of adversity and oppression, what does honesty do in the face of lies and deception, what does ...

Album Review

Peter Hum: Ordinary Heroes

Read "Ordinary Heroes" reviewed by Edward Blanco

by Edward Blanco
April 6, 2020

Canadian jazz pianist Peter Hum has been a fixture and mainstay on the Ottawa jazz scene for three decades. A journalist by profession, covering education, crime and city hall for the Ottawa Citizen, a social conscious and music, have always been driving forces in his life. His third album as leader, Ordinary Heroes contains ten original compositions all inspired by his social and political concerns in today's society and, as such, is dedicated to those to whom we all owe ...

Album Review

Peter Hum: Ordinary Heroes

Read "Ordinary Heroes" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
March 2, 2020

The ideals of promise and hope, and the desire to create a better world and drive out the darkness, need not be fueled or forwarded by the extraordinary. As George Takei, the legendary actor-cum-activist once noted in referencing the individuals who provided succor during the horrors of the Japanese-American internment camps of World War II, it's often the “ordinary heroes" who light the way. Taking inspiration from Takei's words, pianist Peter Hum uses his third album as ...

Album Review

David Smith Quintet: Impetus

by Luigi Sforza
August 23, 2016

La registrazione analogica di Impetus -terzo disco del David Smith Quintet -valorizza pienamente gli aspetti performativi del gruppo conferendo al sound un respiro “naturale," in cui la musicalità si abbina alla precisione esecutiva e l'ariosità delle melodie dà spunto ad ispirati parti solistiche. La band guidata dal trombettista canadese David Smith, naturalizzato newyorkese, sa inanellare in forma coesa i fondamentali precetti del moderno mainstream, al punto da svilupparli in un unicum sonoro, in cui-- ad esempio -la lezione di ...

Album Review

David Smith Quintet: Circumstance

by AAJ Italy Staff
February 23, 2007

È questo un ottimo disco, che ben rappresenta la brillante cifra espressiva di David Smith, emergente trombettista della scena jazz canadese. Il suo è un fraseggio spezzato e frastagliato al servizio di una sonorità calda e rotonda. Con un solismo magnificamente in equilibrio tra tradizione e contemporaneità, oscillante tra la nervosa spigolosità del linguaggio post-boppistico e i frenetici ritmi delle metropoli statunitensi. A questo si aggiunga un pensiero compositivo non appiattito su soluzioni convenzionali, alla ricerca di forme libere ed ...