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Jazz Articles about Gustavo Cortiñas
Amos Gillespie: Unstructured Time for Jazz Septet
by Jack Bowers
Chicago-based composer/educator/alto saxophonist Amos Gillespie's CD, Unstructured Time, employs a variety of time signatures but is anything but unstructured--in fact, the opposite may reasonably be opined, as taut structure is clearly front and center on the album's four instrumental and five vocal numbers. In other words, “unstructured" in Gillespie's lexicon bears absolutely no resemblance to “free" jazz but refers instead to the struggle to find structure and balance in an environment wherein one is constantly bombarded with negative messages and ...
Continue ReadingGustavo Cortinas Snapshot: Esse
by Dan Bilawsky
Gustavo Cortinas' Esse is a place where two passions meet and merge. The drummer's fascination with philosophy served as grist for the compositional mill, inspiring and guiding his hands and mind to create this deep-thinking treatise. It's a fascinating musical realization, exploration, and distillation of the works of Hegel, Aristotle, Descartes, Plato, and other brilliant minds. Cortinas' quest for self-realization and self-actualization leads him down a variety of paths paved by various human dilemmas and universal truths. ...
Continue ReadingGustavo Cortiñas: Snapshot
by Greg Simmons
By now, it shouldn't surprise anyone that jazz musicians often live itinerant lives. Everyone is from somewhere, but usually it's not here, wherever that is. Early jazz musicians--almost exclusively American--migrated from all over the country to the formative hot spots in Chicago and then, a little latter, New York. Today's musicians make those same migratory journeys for school or a gig or a scene, but their points of origin are as likely to be from foreign countries as domestic. Starting ...
Continue ReadingGustavo Cortiñas: Snapshot
by Florence Wetzel
Snapshot is a terrific release by drummer Gustavo Cortiñas, featuring a dynamic combination of musicians who are all associated with the stellar Northwestern University jazz department. The group includes the department's head, the great tenor saxman Victor Goines, who has played with everyone from Dizzy Gillespie to Ray Charles to Bob Dylan. There's also guitarist Mike Allemana, who cut his chops with legendary saxophonist Von Freedman and then went back to Northwestern for a degree. And three recent Northwestern grads ...
Continue ReadingGustavo Cortiñas: Snapshot
by Jack Bowers
Drummer Gustavo Cortinas, who leads a group of admirable musicians on his engaging debut album, Snapshot, was born in Mexico, received his higher education in the States (Loyola University, New Orleans; Northwestern University) and currently resides in Chicago. Besides playing drums, Cortinas wrote and arranged every number on Snapshot, showing impressive proficiency in those areas as well. This is for the most part a sextet session with alternating tenor saxophonists, one of whom, Victor Goines, a native of New Orleans, ...
Continue ReadingGustavo Cortiñas: Snapshot
by Dan Bilawsky
Gustavo Cortiñas has long been a musical seeker and sponge. The Mexico City-born drummer relocated to New Orleans in 2007 to pursue a BM in Jazz Studies at Loyola University New Orleans, learn from the best around--like legendary NOLA drum guru Johnny Vidacovich--and soak in the sounds of that storied city. When he completed that degree in 2011, he packed his bags and moved north to the Windy City. While in Chicago, earning his Masters at Northwestern University, Cortiñas came ...
Continue ReadingGustavo Cortiñas: Snapshot
by Jeff Dayton-Johnson
With Snapshot, drummer Gustavo Cortiñas emerges from that challenging rite of passage: the début album. Following years of training (with saxophonist Victor Goines, among others, who is on the record) and sideman duty (on a record with saxophonist Roy McGrath, who also shows up for this date), a young artist seeks to craft a meaningful and representative musical statement and calling card.The musician has in the short span of the début record's length to establish him or herself ...
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