Jazz Articles about Dom Minasi

Dom Minasi: Quick Response

by Jim Santella
November 3, 2004

From jazz's modern mainstream comes “Quick Response," with its soulful organ groove and hip melodic lines. Guitarist Dom Minasi prefers that his title track move fast and furious; and he backs up that wish with positive results. The leader's fiery guitar breaks loose with an articulate fusillade that numbs the senses.

A native New Yorker, Minasi has maintained a jazz trio with bass and drums since he was fifteen. Now 61, he brings his veteran chops and composer's ...

Dom Minasi's DDT+2: Time Will Tell

by John Kelman
April 10, 2004

Dom Minasi had a brief relationship with Blue Note Records in the mid-‘70s, when he released two recordings and then, disillusioned by the changes in label direction, walked away from recording for nearly twenty-five years. While he continued to play in the intervening years, honing a style that seems to combine a warm tone and slightly skewed straight-ahead approach, he did not begin recording again until 1999. Time Will Tell , his third release for his own CDM Records since ...

Dom Minasi: Time Will Tell

by Jim Santella
March 2, 2004

The modern mainstream is served righteously with Dom Minasi’s latest album, which features his chamber jazz quartet interpreting six originals and two integral standards. Combining elements of free jazz with straight-ahead luxury, the quartet sparkles with its melding of fresh, new ideas and familiar melodies.

Minasi writes from a straight-ahead jazz experience. That’s his starting point. Then he turns it loose. “DMP,” for example, is based on “All Blues.” And the familiar melody makes you feel right ...

Dom Minasi: A Matter of Time

by Eric J. Iannelli
January 8, 2004

When Dom Minasi steps away from his intense schedule of composing, writing, teaching, recording and performing and pauses long enough to talk -- and even then the pace doesn't slow: the guitarist's sentences arrive in a relentless, stream-of-conscious barrage, full of names, anecdotes and ideas -- he seems to dwell on two words above all others: 'in' and 'out.' To Minasi, however, they're not just prepositions. They also double as adjectives.

In jazzspeak, being 'in' or 'out' has nothing to ...

Dom Minasi: Time Will Tell

by Franz A. Matzner
January 7, 2004

Intersecting spirals, overlapping glissandi, free form excursions accelerating to abrupt halts. Reversals. Short melodic phrases rupturing into florid runs. The cello's persistent, mournful grace bound to the guitar's sharper, interpolating voice, both riding on, then blending with the bass's firmer, deeper resonance, gliding within and without the drums' tight pulse and rhythmic report, the runnels and rivulets of sound bleeding together in constant convergence and divergence, streaming into one another to form the triumphant foray into modernity presented on guitarist/composer ...

Dom Minasi: Time Will Tell

by C. Michael Bailey
January 2, 2004

Time Will Tell is the third release from guitarist Dom Minasi on his CDM Records label. On the other two recent discs ( Takin' the Duke Out and Goin' Out Again ), Minasi has taken great glee in allowing his brutally unique approach on the guitar to step front and center. Mr. Minasi has recast standards is a beautifully free and distinct manner, always employing his soft, round tone and superior speed. On his new recording, Minasi expands ...

Dom Minasi: Time Will Tell

by AAJ Staff
November 4, 2003

New York guitarist Dom Minasi inaugurated his CDM label in 2001 with the live record Takin' Out The Duke, a restless outburst of unbridled expressionism. It was a far cry from his two mid-'70s Blue Note records, which tread familiar ground and took smaller chances. He shook things loose again with Goin' Out Again, a similarly reckless but somewhat less satisfying affair, and finally he returns here with a renewed focus on the classic jazz sound. But the temptation to ...