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Jazz Articles about Julian Priester

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Album Review

Clifford Jordan: These Are My Roots: Clifford Jordan Plays Leadbelly

Read "These Are My Roots: Clifford Jordan Plays Leadbelly" reviewed by Chris May


These Are My Roots: Clifford Jordan Plays Leadbelly is an oft overlooked item in the canon of tenor saxophonist Clifford Jordan, whose chef d'oeuvre was undoubtedly Glass Bead Games (Strata-East, 1974), one of the most exalted jazz albums of its era. But These Are My Roots, which was originally released on Atlantic in 1965 and has in 2021 been reissued on vinyl by British audiophile label Pure Pleasure, is of more than passing interest. The hard bop ...

25
Interview

Julian Priester: Reflections in Positivity

Read "Julian Priester: Reflections in Positivity" reviewed by Paul Rauch


My task for the day was to interview legendary trombonist/composer, and jazz icon, Julian Priester. We had met a few times over my 35 years of frequenting the jazz scene in Seattle, coinciding with Priester's years teaching at the esteemed Cornish College of the Arts. In anticipation, I had spent nearly two months preparing, reacquainting myself for that which I already knew-that Julian Priester is a jazz legend that has played an amazing role in the evolution of the music. ...

Album Review

Mike Reed's People, Places & Things: Stories and Negotiations

Read "Stories and Negotiations" reviewed by AAJ Italy Staff


L'idea è di quelle intriganti. Allestire una band -People, Places & Things, gran bel nome- con la quale recuperare e far riemergere dall'oblio la scena jazz della Chicago anni 1954-1960. Scena in lento ma inesorabile movimento, dominata ancora dall'infuocato hard bop ma con all'orizzonte i primi segnali delle trasformazioni che porteranno all'avvento dell'AACM. Per far ciò il compositore/batterista Mike Reed rinforza il suo abituale quartetto con l'amico trombonista Jeb Bishop ma soprattutto con tre musicisti che di quella stagione sono ...

605
Album Review

Max Roach: We Insist! Freedom Now Suite

Read "We Insist! Freedom Now Suite" reviewed by Chris May


Re-released following the passing of drummer Max Roach in August 2007, We Insist! Freedom Now Suite (Candid, 1960) remains a work of enduring musical and social importance. Notwithstanding Roach's central role in the creation of bop, or his later hard bop explorations with trumpeter Clifford Brown, it is, by some margin, the most perfectly realised album he recorded. 1960 was the year in which black Americans' struggle for civil rights reached critical mass. In February, anti-segregationist lunch-counter sit-ins ...

208
Album Review

Julian Priester/Pepe Mtoto: Love, Love

Read "Love, Love" reviewed by John Kelman


With ECM's gradual reissue of titles that have previously been unavailable on CD, the label is providing an opportunity to reconnect with some of the early albums that created such remarkable brand loyalty amongst older fans. Equally, it's giving new listeners the chance to hear exactly why the label's emergence in the early '70s represented such a fresh and significant event in modern jazz, allowing the label to quickly build a reputation for diverse and uncompromising music that continues to ...

486
Album Review

McCoy Tyner: Tender Moments

Read "Tender Moments" reviewed by Donald Elfman


Now 66 years old, McCoy Tyner has made countless albums and become an elder statesman of jazz. He is certainly best known as the pianist in the transformational John Coltrane Quartet of the '60s, but it was with Blue Note recordings like this one from 1967, recently reissued in remastered form, that he revealed his personality as a composer, arranger, and soloist.Tender Moments was one of Tyner's first major explorations of the world of colors and textures available ...

191
Album Review

McCoy Tyner: Tender Moments

Read "Tender Moments" reviewed by Norman Weinstein


This is the first, and arguably, the finest big band album the distinguished pianist ever recorded. Six horns are utilized, with the neglected James Spaulding alternating on flute and alto sax along with tenor saxophonist Bennie Maupin, trombonist Julian Priester, trumpeter Lee Morgan, and the exotic horns, with Bob Northern on French horn and Howard Johnson on tuba. There are six Tyner originals gracing the frustratingly brief album (38 minutes). But repeated listening reveals something very subtle and seductive about ...


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