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Jazz Articles about Jay Sawyer
Nicholas Brust: Frozen In Time
by Dan Bilawsky
Want to hear somebody who means business? Just listen to Nicholas Brust deftly drive through Frozen In Time's opener, Work Ahead." That initial offering on this, the alto saxophonist's full-length debut, explores the travails and triumphs of breaking into the jazz world in New York. Judging by the way Brust burns, flows and blows the doors wide open with his playing, it would seem that he is making significant inroads in that area. An Eastman and New ...
read moreTomoko Omura: Branches Vol. 1
by Nicholas F. Mondello
With Branches Vol. 1, award-winning violinist Tomoro Omura dives deep into exploring textures and melodic invention drawn from Japanese folklore. This effort is a contemporized display which validates Omura's vast instrumental abilities and also channels Japanese folklore as a launch-point for her superior composition skills. The recording is seductive, deeply emotional and meditative, and, simultaneously, elegantly refined. The album offers six tracks, each a fascinating voyage. Moonlight in Vermont" gets such a re-imagined, polyrhythmic treatment that one ...
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by Mike Jurkovic
If, as you start to yield willingly to the sumptuous, hypnotic Branches, Vol. 1, you should need to walk away and attend to other home/bunker business, try to keep at least one ear on the music. From any point in any room you might hear a gypsy laugh, a lover cry, a Celtic reel. A marvelous new touch on a centuries old instrument, bringing the ages together, gathering all the ley lines into one bustling hub. A rising ...
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