Jazz Articles about Phil Ravita

About Phil Ravita

Album Review

Alice Blue is a pleasant, no-frills session neatly performed by Ravita Jazz, a co-op sextet (or quintet plus vocalist) from Maryland whose presumed overseer is bassist Phil Ravita, as his is the only name that coincides with the name of the group as a whole. Ravita also wrote half of the studio date's ten numbers, all of which are original compositions save for Deirdre Jennings's vocal rendition of the standard “On the Sunny Side of the Street." ...

Album Review

Ravita Jazz: Alice Blue

Read "Alice Blue" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
October 27, 2025

Alice Blue is a pleasant, no-frills session neatly performed by Ravita Jazz, a co-op sextet (or quintet plus vocalist) from Maryland whose presumed overseer is bassist Phil Ravita, as his is the only name that coincides with the name of the group as a whole. Ravita also wrote half of the studio date's 10 numbers, all of which are original compositions save for Deirdre Jennings's vocal renditon of the standard “On the Sunny Side of the Street." ...

Take Five With...

Take Five with Bassist Phil Ravita

by AAJ Staff
July 24, 2025

Meet Bassist Phil Ravita One of the Mid-Atlantic's most versatile and sought-after bassists, Phil Ravita leads Ravita Jazz and appears with many other jazz and classical ensembles and orchestras. He is also host of a weekly radio program on WMTB 89.9 FM. Tune in on Mondays at 8 PM EST. He has shared the stage with music legends Joe Coleman, Jimmy Heath, Bobby Shew, Claudio Roditi and Ruby Glover, appearing in countless clubs, concert halls, and festivals. He can be heard ...

Liner Notes

Ravita Jazz: Alice Blue

by Raul d'Gama Rose
June 9, 2025

In the 1939-40 academic year at Harvard University, Igor Stravinsky delivered a series of six lectures in French entitled Poétique musicale sous forme de six leçons. Stravinsky analysed the role of the critic, the requirements of the interpreter and the state of Russian music. He believed that a composer's freedom to create rose from a platform of structures which incorporated the rules of music--a process that ultimately frees the spirit. Stravinsky understood his own vocation as that of ...

Radio & Podcasts

New Music From Ravita, Perelman And More

by Bob Osborne
June 15, 2023

On this show all new music from Phil Ravita Jazz plus two new releases from Ivo Perelman, one with James Emery and the other with Aruan Ortiz & Lester St. Louis. In addition there are new albums from Paula Sanchez & Mariana Carvalho, Hernan Hecht & Rick Parker, Stefano Falcone, Clifford Jordan, Noshir Mody, the Kevin O'Connell Quartet featuring Adam Brenner, Illegal Crowns (Tomas Fujiwara, Mary Halvorson, Taylor Ho Bynum & Benoit Delbecq), Transatlantic Five (Nate Wooley, Ken Vandermark, Christopher ...

Liner Notes

Ravita Jazz: Oriana

by Bill Milkowski
June 12, 2023

On his second outing as a leader, bassist-composer Phil Ravita recruited a close-knit crew of musicians that he's worked with in the Mid-Atlantic region since their time together in grad school at the University of Maryland, College Park. “We've known each other since 2007," he said of bandmates Greg Small on piano and Nucleo Vega on drums. Since then, they've done gigs in New York City, Washington, D.C. and Baltimore and a myriad of Maryland towns and cities. The group's ...