Jazz Articles about Jim Hall

like 214

Jim Hall: Live!

by David Rickert
July 25, 2003

Jim Hall was a sideman on countless sessions with jazz notables--Sonny Rollins and Bill Evans to name but two--yet his work as a leader remains largely unreissued. This makes the reappearance of this 1976 live recording a real treat for jazz guitar fans, for whom Hall is one of the greatest and most imitated legends.

Hall always approached performance with a strong sense of composition and melody and, with the sparse backing of bass and drums, his talents come to ...

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Jim Hall: Downbeat Critics

by C. Michael Bailey
October 2, 2002

At the top of his game...

Seventy-two-year-old Jim Hall shows little indication of slowing down. He has been performing on the Telarc Jazz roster since 1994 and has produced nine recordings for the label, only missing 1996 as a release year. These recordings have received broad and receptive commentary from the critical community. These recordings approach jazz from a variety of directions, all intelligent, all inventive. Telarc, who has recently released a spate of compilation discs ( Signature Songs , ...

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Jim Hall: Jim Hall & Basses

by Dave Nathan
October 1, 2001

Around five years ago fellow guitarist Pat Martino cut an album with fellow guitar players of differing styles. Now master guitarist Jim Hall, is walking down a similar path, only with a gaggle of highly accomplished bass players representing somewhat, but not completely, different artistic profiles. Dave Holland has been on the cutting edge of jazz, a leading member of the avant-garde. Christian McBride is the youngest member while Charlie Haden is a veteran having participated in those revolutionary double ...

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Jim Hall: Jim Hall & Basses

by Mark Corroto
September 1, 2001

A bit leery of concept records, I wondered what some of my best friends would think of Jim Hall’s latest record, Jim Hall & Basses. Given Hall’s musical philosophy of treating the bass as if it were a fellow guitar, these duets and trio tracks sustain interest throughout.

Jim Hall, in his fifth decade of jazz, began with Chico Hamilton and Jimmy Guiffre in the 1950s. He later was an integral part of Sonny Rollins' comeback and the bands of ...

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Pat Metheny: Jim Hall & Pat Metheny

by AAJ Staff
January 1, 2001

Master and apprentice. Predecessor and descendant. Originator and influenced. None of those descriptions of the musical relationship on Jim Hall & Pat Metheny quite sound right. Nor are they accurate. After all, in his own way, Metheny has been greatly original and influential as well. Yet, what we hear on Hall and Metheny's duo album is certainly an affinity. Hall, who always seemed to be unobtrusively present at critical moments the last generation's history ...

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Paul Desmond: Take Ten

by C. Andrew Hovan
May 1, 1999

As legendary a group as the Dave Brubeck Quintet was during the '60s, the fact remains that front line alto man Paul Desmond made some of his finest recordings away from Brubeck and on his own, first for RCA and then for CTI. His RCA sides present the cream of the crop of his recorded legacy, owing much to the fact that during this period Desmond chose not to work with a pianist but instead opted for guitar legend Jim ...

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Bill Evans & Jim Hall: Undercurrent

by David Cohen
June 1, 1997

If Undercurrent, the first and superior of two piano / guitar collaborations by Bill Evans and Jim Hall, (the other being Intermodulation produced four years later), were a book and not a record, then the blurbs on the back of the dust jacket might read: “Lush...beautiful...touching" “Filled with almost fugitive nuance and effortless interaction" “Perfection in spiritual and technical communication" Together, throughout the album, Evans and Hall sound like so much more ...