Jazz Articles about Phil Woods

Phil Woods: Ballads & Blues, Live at the Jazz Showcase, The Children's Suite

by Greg Thomas
April 5, 2009

Phil Woods Quintet Ballads & Blues Venus Records 2009 The Bob Lark/Phil Woods Quintet Live at the Jazz Showcase Jazzed Media 2009 Phil Woods The Children's Suite Jazzed Media 2009 Alto saxophonist Phil Woods is a consummate musician whose mastery of improvisation is second to none. ...

Phil Woods: The Children's Suite

by Andrew Velez
April 3, 2009

Well of course. NEA Jazz Master Phil Woods' The Children's Suite, inspired by the verses of A.A. Milne. Woods has been widely and wildly prolific throughout his career since his early small group days as a teenager, blowing ebulliently with Jimmy Raney and George Wallington, so it should be no surprise that he's created musical settings for these beloved poems from Now We Are Six, featuring Christopher Robin and his imaginary friend Pooh. Along with an industrial-strength orchestra, he's joined ...

Phil Woods: American Songbook II & Swingchronicity

by George Kanzler
May 4, 2008

Phil Woods American Songbook II Kind of Blue 2007 Phil Woods / DePaul University Jazz Ensemble Swingchronicity Jazzed Media 2007

More than other surviving members of the jazz generation that emerged during the primacy of bebop, alto saxophonist Phil Woods reflects the boppers' love of melody. That side of Bird, who ...

Phil Woods / DePaul University Jazz Ensemble: Swingchronicity

by Edward Blanco
November 24, 2007

Not your average university jazz band or your typical recording of oft-heard standards, Swingchronicity represents a musical collaboration between one of the finest university jazz bands in the country and a jazz legend. Under the direction of Bob Lark, trumpeter and Director of Jazz Studies at DePaul University in Chicago, the DePaul University Jazz Ensemble is heard live at Chicago's Jazz Showcase with special guest, world-renowned alto great Phil Woods.

Producing an unbelievable sound for a college level ...

Phil Woods / DePaul University Jazz Ensemble: Swingchronicity

by Jack Bowers
October 3, 2007

Nothing is perfect, so the saying goes, and thus it follows that one can, in theory, always find something to disparage or take issue with in any work of art or piece of music. While that may be true, on a scale of one to ten, Swingchronicity warrants at least an eleven. This is, after all, Phil Woods, one of the world's greatest living jazz musicians, weaving his incomparable magic in a breathtaking concert performance at Chicago's Jazz Showcase with ...

Back to Back Live: Phil Woods & the Los Angeles Jazz Orchestra

by Ken Dryden
January 14, 2007

Phil Woods may not have the lightening fast facility on the alto sax any more, but he still remains among its the top players. Two recent examples come from concert recordings with the Los Angeles Jazz Orchestra made on back-to-back days in 2004.

Phil Woods Groovin' to Marty Paich Jazzed Media 2005

Groovin' to Marty Paich is a tribute to both the late arranger and to the late alto saxophonist Art Pepper, drawing heavily ...

Phil Woods: Unheard Herd

by Edward Blanco
March 13, 2006

In his long and illustrious career, the late Woody Herman led many big bands, including several known as his Thundering Herds. The Unheard Herd recaptures the music of Herman's Second Herd, aka The Four Brothers Band. Some of the music on this set, a selection of his charts from the late forties, was never recorded by the Herman band. The owner and producer of Jazzed Media, Graham Carter, championed the idea for this project and called upon alto great Phil ...