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Jazz Articles about Justin Wood
About Justin Wood
Instrument: Saxophone, alto
Related Articles | Concerts | Albums | Photos | Similar ToSPOKE: (r)anthems
by Ernest Barteldes
On (r)anthems, the New York-based ensemble takes various pop classics and favorite World Music tunes and reinvents them into their own flavor, either going into a New Orleans-tinged feel or just improvising around the melody. An example is Stevie Wonder's Tell Me Something Good," which is re-purposed here into a marching band-like vibe. The Beatles' Blackbird" (incorrectly credited solely to Paul McCartney) begins with the original guitar line as a duet. The ensemble then improvises freely around the melody.
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by Dan Bilawsky
According to the members of SPOKE, this album--the band's third to date--"is both musical rant and anthem." So what does that mean? Well, it means that there's an intentional balancing act between the raw and refined, the focused and the untamed, and the grand and rowdy. Nothing ever goes off the rails and nothing is ever too sedate or bland, as the members of SPOKE continually switch gears and change hats. There's also enough stylistic diversity at play--pop, bop, spicy ...
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by J Hunter
In his liner notes to Spoke's self-titled debut disc, Matthew Lima wrote that this Brooklyn-based quartet is constantly refining the art of the compromise... not into a concession or lowering of standards, but an intermediate between different things." He's half right: There are no concessions whatsoever on Spoke; however, the differences are what it's all about.
The thought that went into the set's twelve pieces is literally mind-bending. Classical music isn't just one of the musical sub-cultures Spoke visits on ...
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