Jazz Articles about Denny Zeitlin

About Denny Zeitlin

Album Review

Denny Zeitlin: Odyssey

Read "Odyssey" reviewed by Katchie Cartwright

by Katchie Cartwright
September 18, 2026

"Don't count stars or you might stumble," the lyric warns. The song is about falling in love, but Denny Zeitlin zooms in on the cosmos at the outset of his live journey into “It Could Happen to You" on Odyssey. He flashes around the piano's twinkling top end with whole-tone swirls and crystalline dissonances, like Tinkerbell or maybe a firefly, with drummer George Marsh at his side, articulating icy stick figures on the ride cymbal, while bassist Mel Graves stays ...

Album Review

Denny Zeitlin: Odyssey

Read "Odyssey" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
August 2, 2026

Pianist Denny Zeitlin takes a trip into his archival book on the first half of Odyssey. He has always mixed eloquence and beauty with adventurousness. That is up front here. A close comparison to his style of playing can be found in the artistry of Bill Evans. And it should be noted that Evans adopted one of Zeitlin's most touching, gorgeously placid compositions, “Quiet Now," into his concert and recording songbook. Odyssey is not a deep archival dive--Zeitlin ...

Album Review

Denny Zeitlin: Odyssey

Read "Odyssey" reviewed by Pierre Giroux

by Pierre Giroux
July 31, 2026

Listening to Denny Zeitlin has often felt like accepting an invitation to the unknown. Zeitlin has never been content to simply play a tune. He probes it, turns it inside out, and often uncovers possibilities most musicians overlook. Odyssey reinforces that reputation. Although much of the material spans different periods of his career, the album never feels like a nostalgic exercise. Instead, it captures an artist whose curiosity remains remarkably intact. The trio's 2003 concert performances, featuring the ...

Album Review

Denny Zeitlin: With a Song In My Heart: Exploring The Music of Richard Rodgers

Read "With a Song In My Heart: Exploring The Music of Richard Rodgers" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
June 30, 2025

Musical memories from childhood have a way of sticking. For some, it might be an encounter with Beethoven from a dusty stack of old albums packed away in the parental record collection. For others, it might be the (then, 1954) modern surge of Bill Haley and the Comets shaking, rattling and rolling into the kitchen to make some noise with the pots and pans. Or maybe a chance discovery of 78 RPM records in the garage containing Al Dexter's 1942 ...

Album Review

Denny Zeitlin: With a Song In My Heart: Exploring The Music of Richard Rodgers

Read "With a Song In My Heart: Exploring The Music of Richard Rodgers" reviewed by Pierre Giroux

by Pierre Giroux
June 6, 2025

Richard Rodgers' melodic genius has long been a favoured playground for jazz musicians, but few reimagine his work with the intellectual depth and intuitive poetry of pianist Denny Zeitlin. On With A Song In My Heart, Zeitlin offers a riveting solo piano exploration of eleven Rodgers classics, combining architectural reharmonization, rhythmic invention and unflinching emotional insight. This is not mere homage; it is a deeply personal conversation with one of the 20th century's great composers. The ...

Album Review

Denny Zeitlin: Panoply

Read "Panoply" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
July 8, 2024

There was a Steinway in the Zeitlin household in the outskirts of Chicago in the early 1940s. During this time Denny Zeitlin would find his way to the piano playing parental laps and sit at the keyboard, where he, he says: “I would put my little hands on their hands and go along for the ride...and I was just very intrigued by the entire panoply of sounds that were possible with that instrument." (from the 2010 AAJ interview with the ...

Album Review

Denny Zeitlin: Panoply

Read "Panoply" reviewed by Pierre Giroux

by Pierre Giroux
June 14, 2024

Denny Zeitlin's Panoply is a diverse array collection of unreleased performances comprising solo piano recordings at the Piedmont Piano Company in Oakland, California, trio sessions with bassist Buster Williams and drummer Matt Wilson captured at Mezzrow Jazz Club in New York City, and duo pieces with drummer/percussionist George Marsh collected over a decade of home recordings at Zeitlin's Double Helix Studio. The album opens with a trio performance of George Gershwin's “I Was Doing All Right." ...