Jazz Articles about Joe La Barbera

like 327

Roberta Gambarini: Easy To Love

by Roger Crane
June 23, 2006

With all due caution about overstatement, let me say that I don't know of a better pure jazz vocalist than Roberta Gambarini. She shows us all that the art of jazz singing is alive and well. During the past few years she has become almost a cult figure, thrilling live international audiences, becoming the subject of enthusiastic discussions on various internet jazz chat forums, and being hailed by numerous insiders as perhaps today's finest young jazz singer. Gambarini is now ...

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A Fireside Chat with Joe La Barbera

by AAJ Staff
April 8, 2004

Familiarity breeds a docile apathy. And certainly the temperamental constitution of Tinseltown commits to one constant - inconsistency. But not among those in the arena. Bona fide heroes of the Los Angeles standard like Joe La Barbera (unedited and in his own words), who elevate the routine to an art. Perhaps spectators ought to be beholden to that kind of loyalty and celebrate our local stock as much as the visiting nationally lauded.

All About Jazz: Let's start from the ...

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The Joe LaBarbera Quintet: Live!

by Jack Bowers
May 3, 2003

Stung too often by inscrutable contracts and creative bookkeeping, a growing number of jazz musicians are taking matters into their own hands, producing and distributing albums on their own independent labels as an alternative to the bondage in which they’ve long been held by corporate overseers. Four of these artists -- trumpeter Clay Jenkins, guitarist Larry Koonse, bassist Tom Warrington and drummer Joe LaBarbera -- have come together to form Jazz Compass Records, an online label whose mandate is to ...

like 253

Kenny Wheeler: All the More

by Robert Spencer
December 1, 1999

Kenny Wheeler's gorgeous trumpet anchors these tracks, but also attracting attention here is the understated beauty and subtle adventurousness of John Taylor's piano. With that kind of combination in his playing, Taylor is a perfect match for Wheeler, who has straddled a few divides in his time. Much of this disc features the ethereal ECM-ish music Wheeler has made his trademark, but some of it harks back to Wheeler's earlier days as a pillar of the English “free music" scene ...

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Bill Evans: Homecoming

by Douglas Payne
June 1, 1999

It seems virtually every one of piano great Bill Evans's (1929-80) performances were recorded during the last two years of his life, when he had his last - and arguably superior - trio with bassist Marc Johnson and drummer Joe LaBarbera. As more recordings continue to surface, it is evident that this was a most commanding unit.What makes this November 1979 recording, issued here for the time, so special is that the Evans trio was captured upon the ...

like 249

Bill Evans: Homecoming

by AAJ Staff
June 1, 1999

“The last two years I was here were perhaps the happiest years of my life.” This was Bill Evans, talking about Southeastern Louisiana College, where he graduated in 1950. You know what happened: he went to New York, had a memorable stay with Miles Davis, and became one of the most influential pianists in jazz. His school also knew; now a university, they gave Bill their first Distinguished Alumnus award in 1969. Ten years later came a special event: a ...