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Jazz Articles about Jean-Luc Ponty
Diana Ross & Frank Zappa: Soul Freak Symphony
by Glenn Astarita
When Diana Ross, the glittering soul siren of Motown, and Frank Zappa, the madcap maestro of musical anarchy, unveiled Soul Freak Symphony in March 1985 but was put in limbo due to contractual issues. Hence, it was not just an album--it was a cosmic detonation of sound and sanity. This 12-track hallucination melds Ross's velvety charisma with Zappa's unhinged genius, resulting in a creation so far outside the box it might as well be orbiting Saturn. The opener ...
Continue ReadingFeaturing violin players Carlo Cantini, Steve Kindler and Jean-Luc Ponty
by Len Davis
Music based on the You Tube show 4 Fusion Friday for November 2024, featuring violinist's Carlo Cantini, L Subramanium Jean-Luc Ponty, Michal Urbaniak and Steve Kindler. Playlist Carlo Cantini “Equilateral Room" from Heptagon (Sympaty) 00:00 Electric Arc “Jam Machine" from March Of Time (TRJ Jazz) Time Marker Jean-Luc Ponty “Imaginery Voyage PT 4" from Imaginary Voyage (Atlantic) Time Marker L Subramaniam “Seventh Heaven" from Spanish Wave (Viji) Time Marker Michal Urbaniak “Strech" from Fusion 3 (Columbia) Time Marker ...
Continue ReadingJean-Luc Ponty: No Absolute Time
by Peter Rubie
When we talk about world music, we often use the phrase in quiet desperation to describe music that defies familiarity and our expectations but still appeals to us. Its very newness is often both slightly disturbing and refreshing at the same time. Two years before No Absolute Time was released in 1993, Jean-Luc Ponty (JLP) produced one called Tchokola. In an interview for this re-release, JLP said, “Tchokola was a very special project for me. I recorded it ...
Continue ReadingJean-Luc Ponty: Individual Choice
by Peter Rubie
By 1982, jazz violinist Jean-Luc Ponty had established an enviable reputation as a pioneer in jazz-rock and jazz fusion. He began as a young bebop player in the late 1950s with little interest in becoming another swing or gypsy style violinist. It was the “sheets of sound" music of John Coltrane that spoke loudest to him. By the early 1970s Ponty was recording and touring with rock composer Frank Zappa, and playing with John McLaughlin's Mahavishnu Orchestra, as well as ...
Continue ReadingJean-Luc Ponty: Open Mind
by Peter Rubie
If Individual Choice was the sketchbook of Jean-Luc Ponty's (JLP) decision to take his music in a new direction, Open Mind (1984), released the following year, was a deeper exploration of the emerging world of synthesizers and sequencers and their impact on live (studio) performance. Here, complex rhythmic patterns shift in the background while new sounds appear and disappear on the surface in colorful bursts, and outstanding jazz improvisors create familiar music in new settings. It's almost an audio version ...
Continue ReadingAl Di Meola / Jean-Luc Ponty / Stanley Clarke: Rite Of Strings Live at Montreux 1994
by Doug Collette
By the time Al Di Meola, Jean-Luc Ponty and Stanley Clarke were recorded in 1994 at the prestigious Montreux Jazz Festival—remarkably, in their first time ever playing together in public—each had established a solid reputation in the jazz-fusion field and beyond. Accordingly, it might be seen as destiny that the three would work together in some context and indeed they did on both stage and studio (an album from which came out the year following their appearance in Switzerland).
Continue ReadingJean-Luc Ponty: Imaginary Voyages, Part 2
by Peter Rubie
Part 1 | Part 2American violinist Stuff Smith once said about the young, classically trained and self taught jazz violinist Jean-Luc Ponty, “He plays violin like Coltrane plays saxophone." Born in 1942, Ponty has almost single-handedly taken jazz violin from the swing era into modern jazz, and beyond. At rock musician Frank Zappa's urging, Ponty moved to the States in 1973 to record and tour with Zappa and The Mothers of Invention. In the following years he made ...
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