Jazz Articles about Don Pullen

About Don Pullen

Album Review

Idiosyncratic pianist Don Pullen's debut as a leader, Richard's Tune (Sackville, 1974) already bore marks of his unique style and singular improvisational approach. Delmark reissued this superb solo outing in 2014 augmenting it with previously unreleased material from the same session making it all the more satisfying.Pullen peppers “KaDiJi," one of the bonus works on the CD, with his signature circular phrases. Edgy dissonance and dulcet spirituality coexist as the tightly woven harmonic lines flow towards the ringing, ...

Album Review

Don Pullen: The Complete Remastered Recordings on Black Saint & Soul Note

by AAJ Italy Staff
July 3, 2012

Credo che ciascuno ricordi bene in quale occasione sia stato folgorato da un compositore, da un solista. Quell'attimo in cui la sensibilità sonora è stata sedotta da una frase, da un timbro, da un ritmo. Nel caso di Don Pullen, la memoria torna facilmente all'ascolto di Changes Two di Mingus: il pianista proiettava i brani, già ottimi, in una dimensione di ulteriore profondità, il suo solismo era qualcosa di mai udito, una sorta di sintesi feroce tra Cecil Taylor e ...

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Highly Opinionated

Don Pullen: Ode to the Life Lived

by Raul d'Gama Rose
August 22, 2008

He is being carried on wings, a Black Icarus, further up, higher than the sun, so the wings will not fail this time. They carry him and the fingers of his left--and all those mad block chords from God knows where--and his right hand--running along the ebony and ivory keys drawing clusters of notes in elliptical swirls they call jazz, from knuckles and fingers into the rarefied atmosphere, where he hooks up for a gig in the sky. ...

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Album Review

Don Pullen: Mosaic Select

by George Harris
July 11, 2005

Don Pullen, with his heart firmly rooted in gospel, bop and blues, and with his hands grasping on to free-form dissonance, was one of the very last truly original jazz pianists. He found a musical soulmate in tenor George Adams, who was similarly blessed with a unique tone: one foot in with the Texas tenors and the other falling through an elevator shaft. The Don Pullen/George Adams Quartet of the '80s became one of the last great and original bands. ...

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Album Review

Don Pullen: Don Pullen: Mosaic Select 13

Read "Don Pullen: Mosaic Select 13" reviewed by AAJ Staff

by AAJ Staff
January 18, 2005

Hit play on just about any Don Pullen record and three things will strike you right away: his fierceness of spirit, deep respect for melody, and a barely-restrained urge to out-and-out make some noise. The late pianist's subversive tendencies come through most apparently in the form of punchy clusters and glissandi, exercised in giant sweeping swaths of sound that warp the focus of his music in unpredictable ways. But it's time to put the stale, superficial comparisons with Cecil Taylor ...