Jazz Articles about Olman Piedra

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Tumbao Bravo with Paul Vornhagen: Joy of the Mambo

by Dan McClenaghan
March 25, 2026

Dance music means a good time. The mambo, the cha cha, 'rhumba' and bolero beats challenge the feet to stay still, they challenge the butt to stay in the chair. The music is pure joy, and reed man Paul Vornhagen and his sextet, Tumbao Bravo, exploit that joy to the max on the fittingly titled Joy of the Mambo. The tone is set with the opener “Firefly Mambo." It is a percolating stew of sound, smile-inducing and dance-friendly, ...

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His Name Is Alive: Sweet Earth Flower: A Tribute To Marion Brown

by Chris May
March 5, 2008

Starting with a bold and beautiful idea--to perform a concert tribute to an iconic musician from an earlier age while that musician is still with us--His Name Is Alive have gone on to record an album of such oh-my-god beauty and vitality that the listener may at first be reduced to silent, slack-jawed wonder. And while we'll never know whether trumpeter Miles Davis would have approved bassist/producer Bill Laswell's reconstruction of his music on Panthalassa (Columbia, 1997), we do know ...

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His Name Is Alive: Sweet Earth Flower

by AAJ Italy Staff
February 25, 2008

La storia del jazz è costellata di artisti dimenticati, talentose meteore che dopo aver toccato invidiabili vette scompaiono dalla luce dei riflettori, spesso in modo tragico. Marion Brown è uno di questi, anche se fortunatamente è ancora vivo e non ha subìto le vicissitudini toccate a Henry Grimes ed altri protagonisti del free. Dopo aver partecipato a dischi storici di quella stagione, come Ascension di John Coltrane o Fire Music di Archie Shepp ed aver suonato con la Jazz Composers ...

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His Name Is Alive: Sweet Earth Flower: a tribute to Marion Brown

by Mark Corroto
November 12, 2007

Everything old is new again, even “the new thing is, well, “the new thing again.

In the 1960s, as the moldy conservatives and even the hard bop practitioners were trying to define jazz as one specific thing. Suddenly, the music exploded into multiple directions. Aided by John Coltrane and Ornette Coleman, adventurism jazz musicians like Albert Ayler, Archie Shepp, Bill Dixon, Sun Ra, Joseph Jarman, and Marion Brown incorporated freedom and Afro-centric themes into the mix.

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His Name Is Alive: Sweet Earth Flower: a tribute to Marion Brown

by Troy Collins
October 30, 2007

Sweet Earth Flower: a tribute to Marion Brown is His Name Is Alive's meditative ode to the work of the under-sung free jazz saxophonist. Veterans of the American rock underground, His Name Is Alive has been exploring various musical tangents since the early 1990s, slowly moving closer and closer to a more improvisational, jazz-oriented base.

The brainchild of Michigan-based, multi-instrumentalist/producer Warren Defever, His Name Is Alive was initially signed to the illustrious British label 4AD, a ...