Jazz Articles about Joe La Barbera

About Joe La Barbera

Album Review

A sobriquet that could be applied to the pianist Bill Evans is “the poet of the jazz piano," as he more than almost any other pianist combined technical mastery with emotional restraint, creating music that feels introspective rather than demonstrative. Every pianist who has ever fallen under Evans' spell has eventually faced the same dilemma. One choice leads to imitation, while the other leads to finding your own voice, carrying Evans' influence. Randy Ingram has wisely chosen the latter, and ...

Album Review

Randy Ingram: Sound Within

Read "Sound Within" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
July 23, 2026

Everybody digs Bill Evans. Beginning in the late 1950s and early 1960s, Evans revolutionized the piano trio format, bringing a near equality of input of the three instruments into the mix. However, the piano itself was still the main voice. Bassist Scott LaFaro and drummer Paul Motian were his running mates. Sunday At The Village Vanguard (Riverside Records, 1961) and Waltz For Debby (Riverside Records, 1962) served as the shots across the bow for the change in the trio approach. ...

Album Review

Jim Self: My America 3/My Country

Read "My America 3/My Country" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
July 4, 2025

Tuba maestro Jim Self, who always has a creative trick or two up his ample sleeve, has subtitled the third volume of My America, his recorded tribute to the land of the free and the home of the brave, My Country, to which he could have added the word “music," as this is an album of country and western songs splendidly arranged for a fourteen-member jazz group by Kim Scharnberg. This is by and large bright and ...

Album Review

Adrian Galante: Introducing Adrian Galante

Read "Introducing Adrian Galante" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
April 30, 2025

The late Phil Woods used to argue that of all the members of the woodwind family, the clarinet is by far the most difficult to manage, saying it was “designed by six guys who had never met one another." If Australian-born, New York-based clarinetist Adrian Galante has any problems with the instrument, they are in no way apparent on his debut album, Introducing Adrian Galante, wherein listeners are introduced to a talented and versatile young artist whose growth to date ...

Album Review

Bevan Manson featuring Tierney Sutton with The Hollywood Studio Orchestra: Talking to Trees

Read "Talking to Trees" reviewed by Nicholas F. Mondello

by Nicholas F. Mondello
October 4, 2024

Bevan Manson is an artist who has a creative duality. As a pianist, composer/arranger and educator, he's been successful in classical and jazz environments. With Talking to Trees, Manson provides an array of both originals and jazz standards, most with an arboreal tint, as the title indicates. The work is a validation that his pen, guiding the talents of vocalist Tierney Sutton and L.A.'s premium players, can make the familiar fascinating and the novel intriguing. Miles Davis' ...

Album Review

Bob Brookmeyer: Live at Sandy’s

Read "Live at Sandy’s" reviewed by Sam Sherry

by Sam Sherry
September 7, 2024

What if a tree fell in the woods, and no-one heard? More to the point, what if, for one weekend, four Guys With Ties wrote the book about how play jazz that balances drive with subtlety, improvisational joy with compositional intelligence, self-awareness with musical wit--and what if the record was released on the You'll Never Hear About It label? Well, that happened this time. For better and for worse, decades later this disc still is news. It's an ...

Album Review

John La Barbera Big Band: Grooveyard

Read "Grooveyard" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
September 27, 2023

Composer/arranger John La Barbera has been at the top of his game for more than half a century, and Grooveyard is simply another example of his undiminished artistry. Besides arranging everything--superbly, as always--La Barbera wrote six of the session's ten charming songs, escorting other treasures by Carl Perkins, Dave Brubeck, Curtis Fuller and Elvin Jones. As he writes his handsome and colorful big-band charts, La Barbera is always careful to observe Rule No. 1: they have to ...