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Richard Baratta: Another Kind of Bird
by Pierre Giroux
Charlie Parker's music has withstood every conceivable tribute. It has been copied, analyzed, celebrated, and occasionally embalmed by its own importance. Imagine the surprise at the release of drummer-percussionist Richard Baratta's Another Kind of Bird, which is not another museum-piece salute to Bird. Baratta and pianist-arranger Bill O'Connell treat Parker's compositions as living, breathing works capable of absorbing new colours, rhythms, and fresh perspectives without sacrificing their lineage. Baratta expands his customary sextet into a formidable, horn-driven ensemble ...
Continue ReadingRichard Baratta: Another Kind of Bird
by Jack Bowers
Even today, more than seventy years after his death at the young age of thirty-four, the legendary alto saxophonist Charlie “Yardbird" Parker remains incomparable, as a player and composer who almost singlehandedly changed the vocabulary of jazz, introducing revisions and concepts that have never worn thin or gone out of style. Simply put, no one had ever heard jazz played the way that Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Bud Powell, Kenny Clarke and a handful of others approached it in the early ...
Continue ReadingJoe Syrian Motor City Jazz Octet: A Blue Time
by Jack Bowers
Drummer Joe Syrian's spit-shined Motor City Jazz Octet keeps driving emphatically forward on its second recording, A Blue Time, using an impressive arsenal to scurry through a generally agreeable lineup of more or less familiar themes that have been given fresh coats of paint by seven astute and talented arrangers. Even with the various harmonic and rhythmic changes, many of which were inspired by Syrian, the music remains lucid and accessible, thanks to the clever charts and spirited ...
Continue ReadingMichael Moody: The Ecstasy of Love
by Artur Moral
Whether or not there is any personal affinity with their stylistic and thematic approach, it is impossible not to tip one's hat to those musicians who insist on navigating against the current mainstream--be it by brandishing the flag of a fierce vanguard or by defending the essentials of tradition, updated with a layer of necessary contemporaneity. Michael Moody belongs to these latter, and he does so by cloaking his entire output under the mantle of an uninhibited, almost provocatively explicit ...
Continue ReadingJoe Syrian: Secret Message
by Richard J Salvucci
A title like Secret Message does make a listener wonder what it might be. Is it deeply subversive, like the Zimmerman Telegram, or apocalyptic, like Fatima? Of course, as someone is reputed to have said, 'Sometimes, a cigar is just a smoke.' So it is possible to over-interpret a title, which may, in the final analysis, simply be a title. Joe Syrian is a Detroit-based drummer, a city that can claim Brian Blade, J. C. Heard, ...
Continue ReadingJoe Syrian Motor City Jazz Octet: Secret Message
by Jack Bowers
No fuss, no frills here, simply forty-seven or so minutes of generally bright and engaging straight-ahead jazz, stylishly performed by drummer Joe Syrian's admirable Detroit-based octet. This is music the group plays often, blending standards from the Great American Songbook with more recent themes by John Lennon and Paul McCartney, Stevie Wonder, Leon Russell and others. The congenial session opens with a pair of well-traveled standards--"Bye Bye Blackbird," and “Star Eyes"--and closes with two more- -"Night and ...
Continue ReadingBrian Ho: Bridges
by Pierre Giroux
Bridges is a showcase of the Hammond B3 organ's soulful capabilities as performed by the San Francisco Bay area's stellar organist Brian Ho. Accompanied by the rhythm section of the deft guitarist Paul Bollenback and the dynamic drummer Byron Landham, both of whom were members of the late Joey DeFrancesco's trio for over twenty years, this album is a journey through a thoughtfully curated selection of songs blending Ho's original numbers with jazz standards and popular tunes. The ...
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