Jazz Articles about Don Messina

Jimmy Halperin: High And Outside

by Ken Hohman
January 26, 2026

Pianist Lennie Tristano's music was in many ways more complex than bebop, featuring a different harmonic language and driven by long, freely improvised melodic lines over a carefully modulated rhythm section. Tristano's disciple, saxophonist Lee Konitz, was the most creative interpreter of this approach and demonstrated its limitless possibilities over eight decades before his passing in 2020. The spirit of Tristano and Konitz is captured well in this live set, originally recorded in April of 2002 at Rutgers ...

Ted Brown Quartet: Just You Just Me

by Jack Kenny
November 29, 2025

Ted Brown's 2013 album, recorded at various locations in New York and New Jersey, is steeped in the traditions of both Lester Young and Lennie Tristano, but what emerges is distinctly his own. Born in 1927, Brown channels the inspirations of these jazz giants, yet asserts his own individuality in every phrase. The ghostly presences of Young and Tristano haunt the grooves, but Brown's interpretive voice remains unmistakable. Tristano's concept of improvisation--marked by avoidance of standard licks and ...

Rich Peare: Blues For Peter

by Jack Kenny
September 21, 2025

There is a special kind of pleasure in sitting in a jazz club, listening to talented musicians use their skills to explore some of the finest melodies of the last sixty years. In their debut album, Blues for Peter, Rich Peare (classical guitar) and Don Messina (double bass) offer just that experience. The album features eight improvised tracks--seven standards and one blues--plucked on a nylon-stringed classical guitar and a gut-stringed double bass. Messina's connection to jazz is deep-rooted. ...

Larry Bluth Trio: Never More Here

by Kyle Simpler
July 3, 2022

Many musicians work diligently to build a career for themselves. Although dedicated to music, these players also try to build a fanbase, book concerts, and score record deals. However, there are an equal number of performers who are driven more by creating music than making it in the music business. Unfortunately, many artists who fall into this second category often fail to get the recognition they deserve. Pianist Larry Bluth could easily fit into this category of talented musicians that ...

Sal Mosca: Thing-Ah-Majig

by Brandt Reiter
August 23, 2005

Often referred to as Lennie Tristano's prime pupil, 78-year-old Sal Mosca has spent the greater part of the last half-century teaching rather than performing or recording, so any new disc by the low-profile pianist is immediately something of an event. Thing-Ah-Majig, recorded in 2004 and especially noteworthy as Mosca's first trio recording since 1959, does not disappoint.The program is what you'd expect from a Tristano disciple: five warhorse standards (plus one Mosca original, the leisurely “Nowhere ), picked ...

Sal Mosca: Thing-Ah-Majig

by Derek Taylor
April 7, 2005

School spirit can sometimes be a liability in jazz, a genre where individuality remains a paramount attribute. Critics lumped drummer Shelly Manne in with the Cool clique early on, even though his flexibility in taste and technique embraced a host of styles from swing to hard bop to early free. Similarly, allegiance to one's mentors, while admirable, occasionally carries peripheral costs of association. Sal Mosca knows these predicaments all too well. As one of Lennie Tristano's most prodigious pupils, and ...

Bluth/Messina/Chattin: Formations

by AAJ Staff
October 1, 2000

The current standard for piano trio music was largely set in the '60s. Recordings by the Bill Evans Trio and the Wynton Kelly Trio, for example, established basic paradigms that have persisted until today. Today's popular trios led by young pianists such as Brad Mehldau and Jacky Terrason, for example, derive much of their style from this influential period.

Formations, a trio outing led by pianist Larry Bluth, falls in much the same category. It builds off jazz standards, either ...