Jazz Articles about Matt Wilson

Matt Wilson's Arts & Crafts: Wake Up! (To What's Happening)

by Ken Franckling
October 2, 2004

"Arts & Crafts" is the perfect name for versatile drummer Matt Wilson's band for this session. For the music they make is indeed an art--and it involves much musical craft. And then there's the title of this, the band's second recording. A title like Wake Up! (To What's Happening) could lead one to guess that Wilson is referring to society's current agenda. Or whether he is speaking to the need to learn from the children around us. The Wilson family ...

Matt Wilson: Wake Up! (To What

by Jim Santella
September 10, 2004

Matt Wilson's reputation as a creative artist precedes him. His strong leadership has produced several fine ensembles with excellent performing credentials. He's served as the backbone for many stellar sessions.

With Terrell Stafford, Dennis Irwin and Larry Goldings, the drummer has assembled one of the finest straight-ahead quartets around. Each has his own unique voice, and each shines brightly on Wake Up!.

As Curtis Stigers joins them for “There Comes a Time," you feel the soulful ...

Matt Wilson's Arts & Crafts: Wake Up! (To What

by Mark Sabbatini
September 9, 2004

Open-minded and unselfish. Good moral qualities, but are they good musical ones as well?

In drummer Matt Wilson's case, the answer is mostly yes on his latest album Wake Up! (To What's Happening) , reuniting the Arts And Crafts quartet that released a relatively straight-ahead album by that name in '01. Wilson, an exceptional player whose albums often involve a fair amount of experimentation with varying degrees of success, puts out a generally very listenable disc here, although ...

Ted Nash: Still Evolved

by Jim Santella
December 3, 2003

Ted Nash's work with Lionel Hampton, Quincy Jones, Toshiko Akiyoshi, Don Ellis, the Mel Lewis Jazz Orchestra, the Herbie Nichols Project and the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra has earned the saxophonist a reputation for living in the mainstream. At 43, he’s in a position to continue shaping the landscape of straight-ahead jazz through his innovative ideas.

The title of Still Evolved refers to the growth we’ve witnessed in the modern mainstream during the jazz resurgence of the ...

Ted Nash: Still Evolved

by C. Michael Bailey
October 9, 2003

Still Evolved can be heard as an accidental suite, a collection of compositions that hang together independent of design. Ted Nash is most recently holding down a tenor chair in the Kennedy Center Jazz Orchestra. Here he turns his attention to small group performance and composition... with a hurricane-like creative force. Mr. Nash has composed eight pieces for the standard trumpet-tenor quintet. And the music is a fresh as strawberries bursting on the roof of your mouth.

Besides ...

Ted Nash: Still Evolved

by Elliott Simon
October 7, 2003

Before he was 20, saxophonist Ted Nash had recorded his first record and had played with musicians as diverse as Lionel Hampton, Quincy Jones and Don Cherry. Now, more than 20 years later, he is at home in both the up- and downtown worlds of NYC jazz as a part of the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra and the Jazz Composer’s Collective. With such connections, Nash is able to assemble the decidedly adventurous rhythm section of bassist Ben Allison, drummer Matt ...

Ted Nash: Still Evolved

by Jack Bowers
September 25, 2003

While there's nothing that's less than respectable on Still Evolved, tenor saxophonist Ted Nash's third album as leader and first on Palmetto Records, I kept waiting for the session to catch fire. Despite the presence of two of Nash's well-known colleagues from the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, trumpeters Wynton Marsalis and Marcus Printup, and a blue-chip rhythm section, it seldom does, even though, taken as a whole, the music is engaging and there are occasional intervals of inspired blowing.

Perhaps ...