Jazz Articles about Greg Osby

About Greg Osby

Album Review

The trappings of The Message, tenor saxophonist Doug Webb's eleventh release for Posi-Tone Records, are perhaps recognizable to anyone with an interest in jazz conventions. All hands, except for drummer Charles Ruggiero, contribute at least one composition. While some are more adventurous (tenor saxophonist Bob Reynolds' “Where Did You Come From?," and alto saxophonist Greg Osby's “Nekide") than others (Webb's “Caught In The Webb" and organist Brian Charette's “Bonnie Lass"), there is nothing here that pushes the envelope or prompts ...

Album Review

Kelvin Sholar Trio: Rites of Fire

Read "Rites of Fire" reviewed by Franz A. Matzner

by Franz A. Matzner
January 21, 2021

A syncretic symphony, Kelvin Sholar's Rites of Fire is the product of 15 years of meditation on the history and esoteric mechanisms of musical expression. The richly satisfying album is unbounded by anything other than Sholar's relentless commitment to self-discovery. Sholar's own resurrection from clinical death to artistic and spiritual rebirth is embedded in the core of the multi-movement composition, which neither defies nor accepts conventional barriers. The piece flows from a space of integration, merging a complex network of ...

Album Review

Benjamin Boone: The Poetry of Jazz

Read "The Poetry of Jazz" reviewed by Duncan Heining

by Duncan Heining
October 27, 2018

Lenny Bruce might have skewered it with his skit, “Psychopathia Sexualis." Mike Myers' mildly misogynist poet might have parodied it in the movie I Married an Axe Murderer (1993). It has been dismissed as a late-fifties fad associated with the Beats. And, yet, the desire of poets and jazz musicians to combine their art forms has proven surprisingly durable. Sometimes, the practice is just plain embarrassing and made worse by the reality that those involved, like the man ...

Album Review

Benjamin Boone: The Poetry of Jazz

Read "The Poetry of Jazz" reviewed by Mark Corroto

by Mark Corroto
March 20, 2018

Benjamin Boone's The Poetry Of Jazz could easily have been titled The Jazz of Poetry because of the almost interchangeable nature of the terms. The composer/saxophonist's vision to put music to the U.S. Poet Laureate Philip Levine's prose is a reminder to listeners that jazz was birthed by the common man, and is not to be kept in an ivory tower.Both professors at Cal State Fresno, Levine and Boone had performed together before, and the saxophonist had used ...

Album Review

Benjamin Boone: The Poetry of Jazz

by Mark Corroto
March 16, 2018

Benjamin Boone's The Poetry Of Jazz could easily have been titled The Jazz of Poetry because of the almost interchangeable nature of the terms. The composer/saxophonist's vision to put music to the U.S. Poet Laureate Philip Levine's prose is a reminder to listeners that jazz was birthed by the common man, and is not to be kept in an ivory tower. Both professors at Cal State Fresno, Levine and Boone had performed together before, and the saxophonist had ...

Interview

Greg Osby: Saxophone “Griot”

by Victor L. Schermer
May 17, 2016

The griot is a West African historian, storyteller, praise singer, poet and/or musician, a repository of oral tradition who is often seen as a societal leader. Saxophonist Greg Osby recently was excited to meet some griots on his travels. While he is originally from St. Louis, he himself is a griot in many senses of the word. As Peter Margasak said in Jazz Times as early as 2000, “Greg Osby has quietly become one of the most potent, complete and ...

Record Label Profile

Inner Circle Music: Creativity and Community Spirit

by Jakob Baekgaard
February 17, 2016

The music industry today is defined by a strange paradox: there are too few labels and too many. On the one hand, the major labels have merged and sign less jazz artists, meaning the dream of a company with plenty of promotional muscles becomes harder to achieve. On the other hand, more and more musicians have started releasing their own music, but their labels are often one-man operations with none of the benefits that come with a true label: a ...