Jazz Articles about Joe Ascione

The Bix Centennial All-Stars: Celebrating Bix!

by Nicholas F. Mondello
September 21, 2023

Cornetist Leon Bismark “Bix" Beiderbecke, while certainly heavily influenced by Louis Armstrong, developed his own highly stylized way of playing and improvising jazz. One wonders what musical highlights might have been accomplished had he lived beyond his 28 years. Celebrating Bix!, originally released in 2003 as a single CD album, adds selections which, due to size constraints, did not make the original release, but they all certainly “make it" here as a double CD and vinyl release. What ...

The Bix Centennial All Stars: Celebrating Bix!

by Jack Bowers
September 14, 2023

Here's a new album by the Bix Centennial All Stars honoring the legacy of the renowned cornetist Bix Beiderbecke. Sort of. Actually, most of the music on Celebrating Bix! was recorded and released in March 2003, the actual centenary of Beiderbecke's birth in Davenport, Iowa. This expanded twentieth anniversary edition includes a trio of songs not released at that time owing to limited space, and has been reissued on two CDs instead of one. Having said that, ...

Joe Ascione and His Brave New World

by Dr. Judith Schlesinger
March 16, 2016

Author's Note: All About Jazz is sad to report the passing of spirited drummer Joe Ascione who battled Multiple Sclerosis for 20 years. In this encore presentation of a 2004 interview, Joe talks about the challenges of his new reality and shows his courageous determination to fight through them. Joe Ascione is a first-call, universally-respected drummer who has been on about 70 records to date. In one of their frequent bizarre choices, the All Music Guide to Jazz ...

Joe Ascione Quartet: Movin' Up

by Dr. Judith Schlesinger
September 20, 2008

Movin' Up is the perfect CD for those who like their jazz straight up and swinging, as well as both traditional and imaginative at the same time. These adjectives also describe uberdrummer Joe Ascione, the versatile, first-call sideman who's been on hundreds of other people's CDs. Recorded in October of 2007, this is only his third album as leader, and it's a corker from beginning to end.

To be more specific: Movin' Up begins with the infectious title ...

Eddie Higgins Trio: Christmas Songs

by Dr. Judith Schlesinger
November 19, 2004

Tis the season (again? already?), and along with the usual relentless merchandising we get the new flock of Christmas jazz. So, striking an ecumenical note, here's the question: why is this Christmas CD different from all other Christmas CDs? After all, it contains a dozen of the most popular holiday songs, done in standard trio format. The answer goes beyond the cover, Meredith d'Ambrosio's fascinating egg-shell mosaic of a snowy Charles River, although it's a huge departure from Venus Records' ...

The Bix Beiderbecke Centennial All-Stars: Celebrating Bix!

by Jack Bowers
May 3, 2003

Cornetist Bix Beiderbecke, who considered himself a failure and died (primarily from alcohol abuse) in 1931 at age twenty-eight, would no doubt have been astonished to learn that a group of world- class musicians was assembling to record an album celebrating the hundredth anniversary of his birth. But if Bix was unable to recognize his own genius, others were--and now, seventy-two years onward, he rests comfortably in the pantheon raised to honor such legendary jazz pioneers as Louis Armstrong, King ...

Various: The International Allstars Play Benny Goodman, Volume Two

by Dave Nathan
January 1, 2002

This is the other shoe dropping on the International Allstars tribute to Benny Goodman and the various small groups he headed. This album comes from the same live concert in Hamburg that produced Volume 1 released in 2000. Obviously there was enough for two CDs and why they weren't packaged as a 2 CD set is puzzling. But no one can point the finger at Nagel Heyer claiming that they were trying to get 2 CDs where one would suffice. ...