Jazz Articles about Jeff Coffin

About Jeff Coffin

Album Review

Bela Fleck and the Flecktones: Jingle All The Way

Read "Jingle All The Way" reviewed by Doug Collette

by Doug Collette
December 22, 2025

Originally released in 2008 on Rounder Records, Bela Fleck and the Flecktones' Jingle All The Way is an accurate microcosm of the deceptive whimsy the group displays on stage during the best moments of their live performances. Its uplifting effect is all the more pronounced as this is a collection of holiday-related music. This last studio album to feature saxophonist Jeff Coffin before his departure in 2009 to join the Dave Matthews Band Band was remastered in late ...

Album Review

Ryan Middagh Jazz Orchestra: Tenor Madness

Read "Tenor Madness" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
February 9, 2025

Nashville-based composer, arranger and saxophonist Ryan Middagh salutes apostles of the mid-range wind instrument on Tenor Madness, his second recording as leader of the Ryan Middagh Jazz Orchestra. Even so, there are no tenor solos after the first three of the album's half-dozen numbers, on which tenors Don Aliquo and Jeff Coffin ("Wiley Roots"), Aliquo again ("Waiter, Make Mine Blues"), Coffin and New York luminary Joel Frahm--who together galvanize the album's robust title song--are featured. While the ...

Album Review

Ally Fiola & The Next Quest: Interblaze

Read "Interblaze" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
March 18, 2023

Nova Scotian alto saxophonist Ally Fiola considers the themes of grief, wonder, fear and passion with her octet The Next Quest, on Interblaze. With a lot of low-end brass--baritone saxophone, trombone, sousaphone--the sound has a New Orleans brass band feel. It is also fun, celebratory music. The title tune and opening number sounds like a prance down Bourbon Street during Mardi Gras--beads flying through the air, people in outlandish dress dancing. An insouciant organ opens “Backtrack"; the horns ...

Liner Notes

Bass Extremes: S'Low Down

by Chris Jisi
January 27, 2023

Thirty years ago, a simple pairing changed the trajectory of bass. Steve Bailey and Victor Wooten, bonded by their mutual fretboard wizardry, sharp wit, and teaching philosophies, formed Bass Extremes, and the instrument and its community were forever transformed. The concept was quite ambitious. Steve was a rapidly ascending anchor for Dizzy Gillespie, Paquito D'Rivera and the Rippingtons, who had found his voice on the 6-string fretless bass and was taking the instrument to uncharted heights, with a soon to ...

Album Review

Steve Shapiro: Plan To Be Spontaneous

Read "Plan To Be Spontaneous" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
January 21, 2023

With mallets at the fore, a solid set of originals on the program and a strong cast in the mix, vibraphonist Steve Shapiro's musical voice and vision is clear-- and really something to hear--across this seven-song set. Working under the banner of a perfectly paradoxical title, he makes his mark from a number of angles--those of soloist, harmonist, composer and bandleader--and gives his bandmates their due. Sophisticated jazz-pop sets the scene as Shapiro shares the spotlight with ...

Album Review

Steve Patrick And The Music City Orchestra: Reflections

Read "Reflections" reviewed by Nicholas F. Mondello

by Nicholas F. Mondello
July 18, 2022

Back in the 1960s, sound technologies and in-studio recording/engineering advances were developing rapidly. Labels such as Solid State and Command Records produced brilliant, acoustically enhanced recordings, many done by New York studio greats such as trumpeter Doc Severinsen. Those companies leveraged technical advances to enhance the talents of the recording artists. As a result, it was a musically rich time for record buyers. With Reflections, trumpeter Steve Patrick, long an ardent admirer of Severinsen, delivers ten selections ...

Album Review

Robben Ford: Pure

by Doug Collette
August 30, 2021

It's only fitting guitarist Robben Ford assigns a closeup of his chosen instrument to the cover of Pure. His devotion to the axe is at least equal to, if not greater than, the ardor he elicits from fretboard fanatics. But then that's a deserved devotion as the man demonstrates in less than two minutes at the very outset of his first instrumental studio album since Tiger Walk ( Blue Thumb,1997): the one-time member of Tom Scott's L.A. Express and Miles ...