Jazz Articles about John Marshall

Soft Machine: Live At The Baked Potato

by Chris M. Slawecki
October 31, 2020

European progressive jazz-rock ensemble Soft Machine seems to have run through more lives than even the luckiest tomcat. They've been first-rate musicians at every incarnation, and it's heartening to hear John Etheridge (guitar), John Marshall (drums), Roy Babbington (bass) and relative newcomer Theo Travis (piano, flute, saxophone) sound so vibrant as well as accomplished on Live at the Baked Potato. Baked Potato is a souvenir, recorded at Los Angeles' legendary musical hotspot, from the ensemble's 2019 tour of ...

Soft Machine: Live At The Baked Potato

by Chris May
July 4, 2020

Live At The Baked Potato was recorded in Los Angeles in 2019 as part of Soft Machine's 50th Anniversary Tour. (Fact check: 2019 was the band's 53rd and this lineup's fourth anniversary). The latest album is a lot of fun even though it bears little resemblance to the music of the revolutionary 1966 -1969 lineups featuring Mike Ratledge on keyboards and flute, Robert Wyatt on drums and vocals, Kevin Ayers on guitar, bass guitar and vocals, Daevid Allen on guitar ...

Buddy Rich: Birdland

by Glenn Astarita
June 26, 2015

There's usually a reason why previously unreleased material was never initially offered for consumer consumption, whether it's due to subpar sound quality, less than adequate material or blasé musicians' outtakes and so on. However, these tracks by the Buddy Rich Killer Force band were recorded at various venues through the years when saxophonist Alan Gauvin--who also penned the album notes --was in the band and recorded these performances for posterity and not initially intended to be sold. Gauvin doesn't recall ...

Eberhard Weber: Colours

by John Kelman
January 14, 2010

As the jazz-rock fusion movement gained ground from its early years in the late 1960s through its glory days in the early-to-mid-1970s—blending the more sophisticated harmonies of jazz with rock music's rhythmic power and high volume—all too often it was about muscular chops and complex writing for the sake of it. Little attention was paid to nuance and understatement. While guitarist John McLaughlin's high octane Mahavishnu Orchestra and keyboard player Chick Corea's guitar-centric incarnation of Return to Forever were tearing ...

John Marshal: Live at "Le Pirate" & Marshall Arts

by Laurel Gross
January 10, 2009

John Marshall Live At “Le Pirate" Organic Music 2008 John Marshall/Ferdinand Povel Quintet Marshall Arts Blue Jack Jazz 2008 Trumpeter John Marshall should be more famously known in the US but a career opportunity requiring relocation to Germany to join the prestigious WDR Big Band in 1992 took him off the New York ...

Hugh Hopper and Matt Howarth: The Stolen Hour

by John Kelman
December 21, 2004

The Stolen Hour refers to the year 2000 when, succumbing to pressures of the international media, Australia's government decided to commence Daylight Savings Time over three months early to better synchronize so that the televised Olympic Games could be seen at more acceptable times by other countries. Bassist Hugh Hopper, of Soft Machine fame and more recently numerous other projects including his intriguing Jazzloops series, collaborates with American artist Matt Howarth for a multimedia project that combines Hopper's music with ...

Arild Andersen/Vassilis Tsabropoulos/John Marshall: The Triangle

by AAJ Staff
July 2, 2004

For a player with a background in classical music, pianist Vassilis Tsabropoulos has done wonders in the realm of jazz, and specifically improvisation. He still plays with a precise, sensitive touch and measures out dissonance in carefully metered pinches, but the tidal ebb and flow that characterizes this trio recording stands as remarkable evidence that he's made the transition completely and elegantly.

Triangle is so named more for the shared space than any sort of angular edges to ...