Jazz Articles about Ezra Weiss

About Ezra Weiss

Album Review

Ezra Weiss Big Band: We Limit Not The Truth of God

Read "We Limit Not The Truth of God" reviewed by Angelo Leonardi

by Angelo Leonardi
April 1, 2020

Compositore e insegnante alla Portland State University, Ezra Weiss è professionalmente molto attivo in ambito locale. Per il suo debutto discografico ha riunito un'orchestra di 17 elementi per presentare il suo progetto in forma di suite e una coda col celebre “Footprints" di Wayne Shorter. Dei dieci brani originali quattro presentano lunghe narrazioni, esposte in forma di lettera aperta per i due figli piccoli e caratterizzate da forte passione religiosa, civile e politica. Weiss entra con forza nella ...

Album Review

Ezra Weiss Big Band: We Limit Not The Truth of God

Read "We Limit Not The Truth of God" reviewed by Jerome Wilson

by Jerome Wilson
November 21, 2019

In 2015 Ezra Weiss began to compose a suite that he intended would be a cautiously optimistic message to his young children about the world they were living in and the challenges and promise they would face as they grew up. By the time this music was completed and recorded in December 2018, its mood and message had changed dramatically. This suite is now an impassioned cry by Weiss on how he and his children might cope with the dark, ...

Album Review

Ezra Weiss Big Band: We Limit Not The Truth of God

Read "We Limit Not The Truth of God" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
November 7, 2019

Composer / arranger Ezra Weiss's debut big-band recording, We Limit Not the Truth of God, is actually a suite written for his two young children to help them understand and embrace the often confusing and chaotic world in which we live. It is thus entirely appropriate that the album was recorded (with an audience) in a church, Portland (OR)'s historic Alberta Abbey. What is not quite clear is the referent “we" in the album's presumptuous title. Is that “we" as ...

Album Review

Portland Jazz Composers Ensemble: From Maxville to Vanport

Read "From Maxville to Vanport" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
October 24, 2018

From Maxville to Vanport is music with a purpose, saluting the courage and resilience of black Americans who helped build those cities in the '20s and '40s in the face of unrelenting prejudice and hostility and in so doing helped make the state of Oregon what it is today. The music is by Ezra Weiss, the lyrics by poet S. Renee Mitchell, the performance by the Portland Jazz Composers Ensemble featuring vocalist Marilyn Keller. As a part of the score ...

Album Review

Ezra Weiss Sextet: Before You Know It [Live In Portland]

Read "Before You Know It [Live In Portland]" reviewed by Dave Wayne

by Dave Wayne
January 21, 2015

On Before You Know It, pianist / composer Ezra Weiss provides convincing evidence for the continued health and well-being of good old, straight ahead, gimmick-free modern acoustic jazz. The archetype for Weiss' beefy band and punchy charts would include Art Blakey's expanded Jazz Messenger lineups, some of McCoy Tyner's larger groups from the early-to-late 1970s, or perhaps some of Slide Hampton's septets and octets. Yet, Weiss' sound is utterly contemporary, exploring a wide variety of modern jazz styles in a ...

Album Review

Ezra Weiss Sextet: Before You Know It [Live In Portland]

Read "Before You Know It [Live In Portland]" reviewed by Edward Blanco

by Edward Blanco
November 1, 2014

Portland State University professor Ezra Weiss is a prominent pianist and composer in his own right who has several recordings to his credit and is a three-time winner of the prestigious ASCAP Young Composer Award. A traditionalist who prefers the straight ahead and modern jazz styles, Weiss delivers another gem on Before You Know It [Live In Portland], his seventh album as leader with one important distinction: the session was recorded at the Ivories Jazz Lounge in Portland, Oregon, for ...

Album Review

Ezra Weiss Sextet: Before You Know It [Live In Portland]

Read "Before You Know It [Live In Portland]" reviewed by Bruce Lindsay

by Bruce Lindsay
October 21, 2014

Recorded over two nights in Portland's Ivories Jazz Lounge during late-2013, Before You Know It [Live In Portland] is pianist and composer Ezra Weiss' seventh album and his first live recording. Weiss' previous releases have featured big bands (Our Path To This Moment [Roark Records, 2012]) and trios (The Shirley Horn Suite [Roark Records, 2011]). However, it's the sextet format that has featured most strongly on Weiss' recordings and it's this line-up that returns for Before You Know ...