Jazz Articles about Jeff Tain Watts

About Jeff Tain Watts

Album Review

As a gift for Nat Reeves' 70th birthday in May 2025, Ken Kitchings, owner of the Side Door Jazz Club in Old Lyme, Connecticut, said he would underwrite a recording for the renowned bassist using whatever musicians Reeves chose to recruit. Having played and recorded with a who's who of jazz luminaries during his 50-plus-year career, Reeves knew exactly where to go and who to contact. Tenor saxophonist Eric Alexander, a longtime colleague, was an obvious choice, as ...

Album Review

AS IS, featuring Al & Stacey Schulman: Crazy World

Read "Crazy World" reviewed by Katchie Cartwright

by Katchie Cartwright
May 1, 2026

What does it take to turn a romantic Cole Porter song into a powerful nine-minute protest piece? The band AS IS teases it out with a bit of a false trail to begin with: a tasty little scat intro, nicely-arranged. You might not suspect. Stacey Schulman brings the head in with a slight tweak to the lyric ("From this moment on, we can see clear: only truth can fight fear..."). Jeff Tain Watts launches what becomes a shipload of hydrodynamic ...

Album Review

Michael Dease: City Life: Music of Gregg Hill

Read "City Life: Music of Gregg Hill" reviewed by Paul Rauch

by Paul Rauch
June 24, 2025

Michigan-based composer Gregg Hill is on a remarkable roll, authoring an impressive run of compositions represented on eight albums released on the Origin Records label. Each has featured a bandleader associated with the top shelf staff at Rodney Whitaker's jazz program at Michigan State University. City Life (2025) is the third under the leadership of trombone great Michael Dease. The two-disc release includes 19 compositions from Hill, and features a cast of some of the most powerful voices in jazz ...

Album Review

Michael Dease: City Life: Music of Gregg Hill

Read "City Life: Music of Gregg Hill" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
June 21, 2025

Jazz trios featuring a horn, bass and drums get right to the core of musical expression. With, most commonly, a saxophone--see Sonny Rollins' blueprint for the horn and trio setting, the 1957 Contemporary Records album Way Out West--the music flows freely. The players do not need to chase chords around. The result is a stretching of the melodies with freewheeling rhythmic finesse. Trombone, bass and drums outings are rare, but Michael Dease goes for it on CD 1 ...

Album Review

Art Baden: How Much of It Is Real

Read "How Much of It Is Real" reviewed by Troy Dostert

by Troy Dostert
February 27, 2025

Continuing its well-established mission of documenting some of the noteworthy Russian musicians in today's jazz, the Rainy Days label offers another up-and-comer, tenor saxophonist Art Baden. Joined by three seasoned veterans, Baden provides both fire and sensitivity on his debut disc, How Much of It Is Real--and it is a promising effort all-around. Bassist Jay Anderson, vibraphonist Joe Locke and drummer Jeff Tain Watts will need no introduction to serious followers of mainstream jazz, and they give Baden ...

Album Review

Lakecia Benjamin: Phoenix Reimagined (Live)

Read "Phoenix Reimagined (Live)" reviewed by Mike Jurkovic

by Mike Jurkovic
July 7, 2024

The certifiable beauty of Phoenix Reimagined (Live) is that it all happens in very very real time as Lakecia Benjamin comes fiercely into her immediate own and then, in a tear of a performance that blisters the paint on the wall, surpasses herself. It is a momentous achievement. One that we rarely get to hear up close, personal and live. Benjamin cuts through the malaise of an empire falling, burning down the ministry of b.s. as she wields ...

Album Review

Doug Wamble: Blues in the Present Tense

Read "Blues in the Present Tense" reviewed by Vic Albani

by Vic Albani
April 16, 2024

I testi cantati del “Blues al presente" di Doug Wamble parlano degli americani “turlupinati" dal cinismo del signor Donald Trump: «Non leggere i loro giornali / Non guardare le loro news / Non cominciare a pensare, baby», canta Wamble in “Blues in the Present Tense," mettendosi proprio nei panni del discusso personaggio mettendo in qualche modo in guardia i connazionali in relazione alle prossime presidenziali. Trattandosi di una realtà quale quella statunitense, l'uso del blues quale “strumento di trasmissione," sembrerebbe ...