Jazz Articles about Denny Zeitlin

About Denny Zeitlin

Album Review

Denny Zeitlin: Early Wayne: Explorations of Classic Wayne Shorter Compositions

Read "Early Wayne: Explorations of Classic Wayne Shorter Compositions" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
July 13, 2016

Pianist Denny Zeitlin's career in music started just a bit after saxophonist Wayne Shorter showed up on the scene. Shorter's debut album, Introducing Wayne Shorter (Vee Jay Records) arrived in 1959. Zeiltin's introduction to the jazz listening public came in 1963, in a sideman stint on flutist Jeremy Steig's Flute Fever (Columbia Records). A year later, in 1964, Shorter signed with Blue Note Records and began releasing what would become a series of classic albums for the label; and Zeitlin ...

Album Review

Denny Zeitlin: Riding the Moment

Read "Riding the Moment" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
June 22, 2015

The album Switched-On Bach (Columbia Records, 1968), by Walter (now Wendy) Carlos was a seminal introduction to synthesized music. Carlos used the then new MOOG Synthesizer to painstakingly construct the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. Love it or hate it seemed to be the reaction, without much opinion in between. But one thing for certain, the synthesizer genie was out of the bottle. Times have changed. The once cumbersome MOOG has given way to smaller and much more ...

Multiple Reviews

Drums and Piano: Denny Zeitlin and Kasper Tom

by Jakob Baekgaard
May 4, 2015

The meeting between drums and piano is one of the more rare combinations in jazz, but it is possible to find fine examples of this particular genre. Just think of the encounter between Italian pianist Enrico Pieranunzi and drummer Paul Motian on Flux & Change (Soul Note, 1995) and Australian pianist Mike Nock's collaboration with drummer Laurenz Pike on Kindred (FWM Records, 2012). Pianist Denny Zeitlin and the Danish drummer Kasper Tom have added two more albums ...

Album Review

Denny Zeitlin: Stairway to the Stars

Read "Stairway to the Stars" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
July 22, 2014

Pianist Denny Zeitlin's Stairway to the Stars recording sparkles to life on the familiar Great American Songbook jewel, “There Will Never Be Another You." This version has everything that the best piano trio efforts offer: elegance, inspired three-way interplay, a vivacious groove--thanks to drummer Matt Wilson and bassist Buster Williams--and Zeitlin's always supple touch and endless inventiveness. Zeiltin, has rolled in a creative high gear since his teaming with Sunnyside Records in 2009, beginning with In Concert with ...

Extended Analysis

Denny Zeitlin: Both/And

by Dan McClenaghan
July 20, 2013

Pianist Denny Zeitlin has the distinction--among many others--of having written one of the loveliest of love songs: “Love Theme From Invasion of the Bodysnatchers." The tune can be heard in its unadorned beauty on Zeitlin's Precipice (Sunnyside Records, 2010), the recording of an extraordinarily beautiful and adventurous solo concert. The original version of the tune, from the soundtrack of the 1978 movie, Invasion of the Bodysnatchers (1978)--a masterful remake of the classic 1954 science fiction film--was Zeitlin's lone effort at ...

Album Review

Denny Zeitlin: Wherever You Are--Midnight Moods for Solo Piano

Read "Wherever You Are--Midnight Moods for Solo Piano" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
July 20, 2012

There's something magnificent about a top-level artist alone with a piano, immersed in a mood of quiet nights, under quiet stars. Denny Zeitlin, a versatile music maker who wrote the electro-acoustic symphonic soundtrack for the 1978 remake of the science fiction classic Invasion of the Body Snatchers, has released a handful of excellent trio albums on the MaxJazz and Sunnyside labels, but since 2010, has concentrated on solo perforomances.Precipice (Sunnyside Records, 2010) and Labyrinth (Sunnyside Records, 2011) are ...

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Extended Analysis

Denny Zeitlin: Labyrinth

by Dan McClenaghan
July 22, 2011

Denny ZeitlinLabyrinthSunnyside Records2011 Pianist Denny Zeitlin recorded a handful of fine albums for Columbia Records in the mid-1960s, forward-leaning trio affairs showcasing his often cerebral but always approachable technique and his superb songwriting. This was at a time when he was studying medicine. He became, and continues to be, a practicing psychiatrist and university professor, so something--jazz would be the expected pick--could easily have taken a back seat. But while Dr. ...