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David Bode: Good Hang
by Jack Bowers
Good Hang. That is not only a good name for an album but one that depicts the luminous spirit animating a splendid debut recording by New Orleans-bred composer, arranger and saxophonist David Bode's stellar nineteen-member Crescent City-based big band. From end to end, top to bottom, stem to stern or inside out, this studio session is a Good Hang by any measure one wishes to use. That impression is nowhere more apparent than on the opening number, ...
Continue ReadingBillie Davies: Retrospectives (In The Key Of Jazz)
by La-Faithia White
Retrospectives (In The Key of Jazz) showcases a body of work by drummer Billie Davies that was created over a six year period. The musicians answered her call, recording albums and performing on her acoustic or hybrid drum set from 2012 to 2018. These pieces of music have never been released and are all improvisations that happened during rehearsals and/or performances in between or leading up to her album projects in Hollywood and New Orleans. “Hollywood Boulevard From ...
Continue ReadingBillie Davies: On Hollywood Boulevard - Live at The Mint in New Orleans
by La-Faithia White
The original recording of On Hollywood Boulevard took place in 2016. The inspiration comes from drummer Billie Davies personal experience of living at the historic Hillview Apartments on Hollywood Boulevard in 2009. Hillview Apartments, a hotspot during the silent film era, were considered Hollywood's first artist high-rise. Davies remembers witnessing it all, the tourist traps, the Hollywood legends and heroes' reverence, the young artist communities from painters to musicians to photographers, videographers and writers aspiring to become accomplished and successful. ...
Continue ReadingBillie Davies Trio: Perspectives II
by Jerome Wilson
The spiritual jazz tradition, as exemplified by John Coltrane, Alice Coltrane and Pharoah Sanders, has been having a resurgence over the past few years in places like Los Angeles and Great Britain. Now here is evidence that some musicians in New Orleans are going down that path as well. Billie Davies is a drummer from Belgium who now lives and works in the Big Easy and this recording, available only in download form, captures a live performance of her trio, ...
Continue ReadingBillie Davies: On Hollywood Boulevard
by Budd Kopman
There could not be much more of a musical, emotional or just vibe difference than that between drummer Billie Davies' latest album On Hollywood Boulevard and her previous project, Hand In Hand In The Hand Of The Moon. However, although they inhabit completely different worlds, both projects had a very long gestation and originate in Davies' reactions to specific events in her life, the latter to her interaction with painter Serge Vandercam, while the former to living in ...
Continue ReadingBillie Davies - A Nu Experience: On Hollywood Boulevard
by Sacha O'Grady
From Buddy Rich to Billy Cobham, jazz drumming (as opposed to pop-rock) has been a predominately masculine affair, and something which perhaps remains so even to this day -which isn't to say that women are excluded from the club entirely. Drummer Billie Davies began her career in Europe, performing extensively across the continent, before immigrating to America, until eventually she made her way to New Orleans in 2014, teaming up with IRIS P (vocals), Evan Oberla (electric piano, ...
Continue ReadingBillie Davies: Hand In Hand In The Hand Of The Moon
by Budd Kopman
Free drummer Billie Davies calls Hand In Hand In The Hand Of The Moon a symphony, which implies composition, larger planned structures, etc. Nothing like that is here, as the music was improvised and recorded in one session. However, this music is not just a free session of highly intuitive and sensitive players; it has a reason for being, and that reason is the intersection of the life paths of two artists working in different media -Davies, a musician and ...
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