Jazz Articles about George Russell

Why George Russell Will Always Live in Time

by Raul d'Gama Rose
August 10, 2009

A measure of just how underrated a musician he was in his lifetime is reflected in the fact that even three days after he passed on most of the major publications had not even reported his death, much less celebrated his life in the glowing terms that he so richly deserved. Perhaps this was because oddly enough he may have spent a lifetime mostly in the quietude of musical intellectualism rather than in its practice. That is, after all how ...

George Russell Sextet: Ezz-Thetics

by Troy Collins
October 6, 2007

A post-war masterpiece, Ezz-Thetics is pianist/arranger George Russell's definitive 1961 sextet recording from the earliest phase of his multi-decade career. On par with such iconic albums as Oliver Nelson's Blues and the Abstract Truth (Impulse!, 1961), Mal Waldron's The Quest (Riverside, 1961) and Andrew Hill's Point of Departure (Blue Note, 1964), Ezz-Thetics traffics in the same advanced but accessible strain of avant-garde-influenced post-bop.

Author of The Lydian Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organization (pub. 1953), Russell's seminal concepts of ...

George Russell And The Living Time Orchestra: 80th Birthday Concert

by Robert R. Calder
September 16, 2006

George Russell And The Living Time Orchestra 80th Birthday Concert Concept Publishing 2005

Now and then in recent years, George Russell (born 1923) has attacked what he considers backward-looking tendencies in the playing of younger jazzmen. The Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra was among those who fell under grave suspicion. Yet there's not much difference between the music on 80th Birthday Concert and Wynton Marsalis' arrangement of “A Love Supreme" for LCJO.

Russell, though always ...

George Russell

by AAJ Staff
January 22, 2006

By Ed Hazell At 83, George Russell moves a little slower than he used to and his voice, which has never lost its Midwestern twang, is softer. But his eyes have not lost their amused, intelligent twinkle and he has never lost his passion for making music.“My aim at this point is to understand the language of music in its deepest sense and contribute to it, enrich it," he said one evening recently, sitting at ...

George Russell & The Living Time Orchestra: The 80th Birthday Concert

by Jerry D'Souza
October 24, 2005

George Russell celebrated his 80th birthday in 2003, touring Europe with the Living Time Orchestra, and being well and truly appreciated, as indeed he should. Apart from his Lydian Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organization, Russell has made several important recordings that are part of jazz history. In doing so he has translated theory into the vivid three-dimensional imagery that has been captured in his music.

The music still captures the imagination. It runs the gamut of several idioms, ...

George Russell: Ezz-Thetics

by Reid Thompson
December 1, 2001

It is not often that a CD is utterly captivating from the first few measures upon first listening. Some recordings capture so accurately a period of music and are so spontaneously perfect that their listeners are enthralled from start to finish, much like children on Christmas morning. Ezz-Thetics is such a CD, in the company of watermarks like Kind of Blue and The Blues and the Abstract Truth ; this is no overstatement.

1961 saw the first signs of acceptance ...

George Russell: George Russell Sextet at the Five Spot

by David Adler
May 1, 2001

George Russell, like Lennie Tristano, is one of the unsung prophets of modern jazz. The theoretical innovations for which he has become known are suffused throughout this early small group session, released in 1960 by Decca and now reissued by Verve. Although it’s billed as a live record, the reissue essay by Kirk Silsbee lets the cat out of the bag: Russell (on piano) and his sextet made the album in the studio following a three-week stint at the Five ...