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Jazz Articles about Emmet Cohen
Emmet Cohen has one foot in the tradition, and another in the future
by Leo Sidran
Within about a week of home quarantine in March 2020, pianist Emmet Cohen started live-streaming shows every Monday night from his apartment in Harlem.At first it was just Cohen and his bandmates, drummer Kyle Poole and bassist Russell Hall, set up in Cohen's living room. Eventually they started inviting guests, and Emmet's Place became one of the spots for live jazz in pandemic New York. Six months in, it had really caught on: the Emmet's Place performance of ...
Continue ReadingTim Mayer: Keeper of the Flame
by Jack Bowers
On Keeper of the Flame, Tim Mayer, a Bostonian who now calls Mexico home, leads a sharp, swinging group of like-minded amigos on a (mostly) octet studio date enriched by Diego Rivera's colorful arrangements. Mayer plays tenor sax on half a dozen tracks, soprano sax on “Bye Bye Blackbird" and “Get Organized," alto flute on “Elusive." Mayer's tenor spans a bridge from early John Coltrane to George Coleman, Joe Henderson, Bob Mintzer and other post-bop patriarchs with a dash of ...
Continue ReadingEmmet Cohen: Hail the Piano Player
by Zachary Weg
In a plain, gray building off Edgecombe Avenue in Harlem, pianist, Emmet Cohen, gently hammers on his instrument, head bopping to the drum hits and bass thuds that reverberate along the plant-lined walls of his apartment. Thirty years old and one of the finest piano players to emerge in decades, the Miami-born and Montclair, New Jersey-raised musician is not just the poster man for contemporary jazz, breathing 2020s finesse onto early twentieth century swing, he is a supremely gifted and ...
Continue ReadingAnaïs Reno: Lovesome Thing: Anaïs Reno sings Ellington & Strayhorn featuring Emmet Cohen
by Richard J Salvucci
The first time someone told me that Billy Strayhorn was a teenager when he wrote “Lush Life," I didn't believe it. Not so much because of the harmonic gymnastics, which were daunting enough, but because of the lyrics. “Romance is mush stifling those who strive, I'll live out a lush life in some small dive." No, someone had to have lived quite a bit to write something like that. No-one at eighteen could know that, so I thought, because I ...
Continue ReadingAnaïs Reno: Lovesome Thing: Anaïs Reno sings Ellington & Strayhorn featuring Emmet Cohen
by Pierre Giroux
Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn were collaborators for several decades beginning in the late 1930s. They became so closely intertwined musically that it was frequently impossible to distinguish their work. Anaïs Reno a young and promising singer has chosen to use their compositions as the basis for her debut release Lovesome Thing: Anaïs Reno Sings Ellington & Strayhorn. This choice was not without risk as the harmonic structure and lyrics of some of the compositions are better suited to a ...
Continue ReadingVeronica Swift: This Bitter Earth
by Angelo Leonardi
Ad appena 26 anni Veronica Swift firma il suo album più avvincente e maturo, imponendosi come la vocalist stilisticamente più completa emersa nel nuovo millennio. Dotata di un talento prodigioso, s'è imposta nell'affollato panorama odierno delle cantanti per inventiva e virtuosismo, rinnovando l'eredità di grandi interpreti degli anni cinquanta come Anita O'Day e Dinah Washington. Veronica Swift s'esprime con esuberante entusiasmo e profondità interpretativa, sorretta da una naturale capacità di “comunicare" col pubblico, ben oltre il semplice ...
Continue ReadingVeronica Swift: This Bitter Earth
by Mike Jurkovic
Borrowing music from Broadway (Oliver!, South Pacific, Bye Bye Birdie), alt-rock (The Dresden Dolls' “Sing!"), the great American Songbook, ("Getting To Know You"), R&B, and beyond, it takes an artist of sure and rising stature to curate one hell of a coherent protest album. Veronica Swift is that artist and, most declaratively, This Bitter Earth is that album. Since there is not a standard of any bearing that Swift doesn't defy and stamp as her very own, it ...
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