Jazz Articles about Jay Thomas

Jay Thomas and Wataru Hamasaki: Accidentally Yours

by Jason West
October 16, 2005

Jay Thomas, Wataru Hamasaki, and Geoffrey Keezer divide the lion's share of jazz improvisation on this May, 2004 session taped at Ironwood Studios in Seattle, and while Thomas (a veteran Northwest trumpeter gaining international attention) and Keezer (whose resume includes stints with Art Farmer and Ray Brown) are well-established players, Hamasaki is a virtual unknown. Now here he is playing with the big boys, and making a big impression.

Thomas encountered Hamasaki on a recent sojourn to the land of ...

Jay Thomas: Blues for JW

by Michael P. Gladstone
December 8, 2003

With a multi-horn specialist like Jay Thomas, you get a lot more bang for your buck, since his main axe is the trumpet/flugelhorn (a la Ira Sullivan, Australia's James Morrison and Benny Carter). Thomas is a Seattle-based musician who has appeared on sixty recorded sessions. This, his eighth album as a leader, was recorded at Tula's Jazz Club in Seattle exactly one year ago. With over four decades in the business, Thomas started with Machito's Band in the '60s and ...

Jay Thomas/Becca Duran: Song for Rita

by Dave Nathan
December 1, 2000

Jay Thomas is a fine multi-instrumentalist, equally at home with flute, soprano sax, flugelhorn and trumpet. And the playing of any one of these instruments in no way compromises his playing on any of the others. Like Benny Carter, he is one of very few jazz musicians who are adept on instruments with very different mouthpieces and therefore requiring very different embouchures.

Song for Rita is Thomas' 5th album as a leader and presents a variety of Latin sounds and ...

Jay Thomas: 12th and Jackson Blues: Live at the Cotton Club

by C. Michael Bailey
January 1, 2000

Blakey and Company. Multi-instrumentalist Jay Thomas was greatly influenced by the Hard Bop pioneered in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s. Foremost was the spell cast by Art Blakey and it is this influence that is most evident on 12th and Jackson Blues, where he plays like Lee Morgan, Freddie Hubbard, Benny Golson, and Wayne Shorter all rolled into one. A Hard Bop delight from start to finish.

A native of Seattle before it was know for grunge rock, Thomas, ...