Jazz Articles about J.D. Parran

About J.D. Parran

Album Review

Cecil Taylor Orchestra Humane: At Iridium 2004

Read "At Iridium 2004" reviewed by Jack Kenny

by Jack Kenny
July 14, 2026

At Iridium 2004 is a vast work. Cecil Taylor also leaves behind similarly vast territories of sound: the 10-disc Feel Trio recordings 2 Ts For A Lovely T (Codanza Records, 1995) or the monumental In Berlin '88 box (FMP, 1989). Within jazz, his music stands like a monolith--challenging and imposing. Cecil Taylor Orchestra Humane's At Iridium 2004 continues the tradition. Taylor's hallmark intensity remained undiminished at the Iridium residency. Contemporary accounts suggest that these performances functioned less as ...

Radio & Podcasts

JD Parran and Mark Deutsch, Daniel Carter, & Irreversible Entanglements

by Maurice Hogue
October 2, 2023

California Street Sessions, a new duo recording by reed master JD Parran and bassist Mark Deutsch, is intriguing, particularly when consider the instrumentation: Parran plays a seldom-heard contralto clarinet while Deutsch plays the bazantar, a hybrid bass that he invented himself. The music's excellent too. Other new albums sampled this week come from Daniel Carter and his Telepathic Band, Kris Davis' Diatom Ribbons, Vancouver's Malleus Trio, and saxophonist Andrew Rathbun. Plus--there's always one of those--a preview of Protect Your Light ...

Album Review

Amir ElSaffar River of Sound Orchestra: The Other Shore

Read "The Other Shore" reviewed by Neri Pollastri

by Neri Pollastri
December 2, 2022

Secondo disco per la Rivers of Sound Orchestra, ensemble creato nel 2015 da Amir ElSaffar con il preciso intento di esplorare in modo originale le culture musicali delle sue origini. ElSaffar è infatti nato negli Stati Uniti da madre statunitense e padre di origini irachene; avvicinatosi precocemente alla musica, ha coltivato quella jazzistica dalla discoteca paterna e quella classica dalle frequentazioni della madre; musicista dalle collaborazioni di altissimo livello--tra gli altri Cecil Taylor e Vijay Iyer--solo da adulto si è ...

Album Review

Jabbo Ware - The Me We & Them Orchestra: Vignettes in the Spirit of Ellington

by AAJ Italy Staff
January 28, 2008

La prima domanda che si pone dopo l’ascolto di Vignettes in the Spirit of Ellington riguarda questo Jabbo Ware che riesce a mobilitare una big band con aggiunta di archi, percussioni e corni francesi e presenta un omaggio a Duke Ellington così forte, denso, logico e coinvolgente. Dopo una breve ricerca si scopre che ha un curriculum di lungo corso e tutto rispetto: all’inizio sassofonista r&b, poi in collettivi d’avanguardia come il Black Artists Group of St Louis, ma senza ...

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Album Review

JD Parran & Mark Deutsch: Omegathorp: Living City

Read "Omegathorp: Living City" reviewed by Jeff Stockton

by Jeff Stockton
February 13, 2007

JD Parran is a consummate musician's musician, a multi-reedist who has performed in a wide variety of settings, most notably with Julius Hemphill and members of St. Louis' Black Artists Group, as well as Anthony Braxton's ensembles; he was also a member of the horn section Robbie Robertson introduces at the start of The Band's Rock of Ages. Recorded live at NYC's Merkin Concert Hall on September 12, 2002, Parran and bassist Mark Deutsch co-lead a group that includes pianist ...

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Album Review

Andrew Hill: A Beautiful Day

Read "A Beautiful Day" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey

by C. Michael Bailey
September 13, 2002

Dusk was only the beginning to this part of the story...I cannot listen to Andrew Hill’s new big band recording without thinking of him and his band as a relatively well-behaved Sam Rivers and the Rivbea Big Band. Of course, that horribly shortchanges the 65 year-old Chicago native who’s Palmetto debut, Dusk, was considered by many critics as the best jazz recording on the year. Add to that that Blue Note’s Alfred Lion considered Hill his last great ...

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Album Review

Andrew Hill: A Beautiful Day

Read "A Beautiful Day" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
August 1, 2002

"There is plenty going on," designated cheerleader Stanley Crouch informs the reader, on composer / pianist Andrew Hill's latest album, A Beautiful Day, which showcases Hill's sixteen-piece big band in a concert performance last January at New York's famed Birdland nightclub. “With a vision given to great plasticity," Crouch writes, “[Hill] has found his own ways to reinterpret 4/4 swing, the blues, the romantic or meditative ballad, and the Afro-Hispanic rhythms that have almost invariably connected one generation of Jazz ...