Jazz Articles about Michael Wolff

Michael Wolff: Impure Thoughts On Hold

by Todd S. Jenkins
September 3, 2007

Pianist Michael Wolff has some of the most expansive vision of anyone working in jazz today. Born in the California High Desert, raised in New Orleans and now making his home in Manhattan, the well-traveled, big-eared Wolff is never short on surprises for his listeners. With his dazzling Impure Thoughts ensemble on hiatus, Wolff's two current albums up the ante beyond that band's extraordinary work.

Michael Wolff Jazz, Jazz, Jazz Wrong Records 2007

Michael Wolff Trio: jazz, Jazz, jazz

by John Barron
August 29, 2007

It's difficult to pigeonhole Michael Wolff. The celebrated pianist/composer has been able to successfully navigate a career between commercial and non-commercial music. His performance credits include Cannonball Adderley, Nancy Wilson, Warren Zevon and, perhaps most memorably, a high-profile stint as musical director for The Arsenio Hall Show. With jazz, Jazz, jazz, as the title so brazenly suggests, Wolff leaves little doubt as to where his musical passion lies. The disc was recorded in 2001 with legendary bassist John B. Williams ...

Michael Wolff Trio: jazz, JAZZ, jazz

by Joel Roberts
August 4, 2007

Pianist Michael Wolff has had a career that can best be described as eclectic. Along with serious jazz stints with Cannonball Adderley, Sonny Rollins and Nancy Wilson, he's played with rocker Warren Zevon, explored world music, recorded an album as a vocalist and had a high-profile five-year gig as the bandleader on The Arsenio Hall Show. He currently produces and appears in a Nickelodeon series called The Naked Brothers Band, starring his two young sons. But as ...

Take Five With Michael Wolff

by AAJ Staff
March 27, 2007

Meet Michael Wolff: Michael Wolff is a genuine hipster--a Manhattan-based family man and internationally acclaimed pianist-composer-bandleader whose late night, blue light singing on Love and Destruction, his tenth album, brings new cool to an inspired selection of rock/pop classics as well as his own tunes about the well-lived life.A baby boomer in his prime, Wolff is renowned for his jazz roots and his melodically fresh and rhythmically compelling multi-keyboard style. A New Orleans native whose father taught him ...

Michael Wolff & Impure Thoughts: Dangerous Vision

by Ken Franckling
January 19, 2005

From the opening trill of repetitive block chords on Michael Wolff's piano and a brash hip-hop drumbeat compliments of Mike Clark on the opening title track, listeners tuning in to Dangerous Vision will sense rather quickly that they're in for an exhilarating ride. This third recording by Wolff's working band, Impure Thoughts, is its finest moment on record. It is also a musical autobiography of sorts for Wolff, who is best known by many as the musical director for TV's ...

Contemporary Jazz, Slightly Offstream

by Roy Strassman
March 13, 2004

Michael Wolff & Impure Thoughts Jazz Alley Seattle, WA November 7, 2000Michael Wolff and Impure Thoughts blew into town accompanying the incoming weather front with a hard-driving rainstorm of its own—one of trance-like percussion and bass grooves and heavy winds blowin' in over the reeds and piano strings. The light “voter turnout" for the first set was undoubtedly due to the heavy turnout at the polls and the anticipation of the presidential race. This didn't ...

Michael Wolff: The Tic Code

by AAJ Staff
November 1, 2000

The Tic Code represents to Michael Wolff more than a soundtrack album that he wrote and produced. It represents very personal music that helps depict his struggles with Tourette Syndrome, a neurological condition that involves involuntary tics, shouts and vocal sounds. As the musical director of The Arsenio Hall Show , Wolff was able to control the visible signs of the syndrome on camera. Polly Draper of the TV show thirtysomething appeared on the show, dated Wolff, eventually married him ...