Jazz Articles about Phil Woods

Phil Woods: Groovin' to Marty Paich

by Jack Bowers
March 18, 2005

More than 45 years ago, arranger Marty Paich and alto saxophone legend Art Pepper recorded the benchmark album Art Pepper + Eleven, on which Pepper and a “mini-big band performed Paich's superlative charts. Fast forward to May 2004, when Ken Poston and the Los Angeles Jazz Institute presented “Springsville, a four-day festival celebrating “the Birth of the Cool and beyond. One of the stars on hand for the event was alto saxophonist Phil Woods, and the idea occurred to place ...

Phil Woods: Groovin' to Marty Paich

by Geoff Roach
February 27, 2005

What a difference 45 years makes. But 45 years don't change a thing. If this sounds like an obvious conflict, you should listen to Phil Woods and the Los Angeles Jazz Orchestra play twelve classic arrangements by Marty Paich. Paich is one of the unsung heroes of music as a pianist, composer, and arranger. Phil Woods is one of the top alto sax players in the history of the horn. The combination deserves a listen.

So where do ...

Phil Woods: This Is How I Feel About Quincy

by Jack Bowers
December 11, 2004

Phil Woods and Quincy Jones have shared a personal friendship and musical camaraderie for almost half a century, and Woods' newest album, This Is How I Feel About Quincy, is neither a spurious nor spur-of-the-moment homage but one whose sincerity is as clear as its meticulous planning and execution. And thanks to the remarkable talents of Woods, Jones and Woods' nine-piece “little big band," it's also one of the year's more impressive scrapbooks of swinging, straight-down-the-fairway jazz.

As Jones has ...

Herbie Mann & Phil Woods: Beyond Brooklyn

by George Kanzler
October 15, 2004

Herbie Mann and Phil Woods met when they were two barely adult beboppers jamming together at a joint called Tony's Bar on Flatbush Ave. in Brooklyn in 1951. A couple years later, Woods would play on Mann's Yardbird Suite LP. They finally shared the front line on an album again with this CD, the last Mann made before he died on July 2, 2003.Beyond Brooklyn is a fine envoi to Mann's career, featuring the flutist in many of ...

Phil Woods and Carl Saunders: Play Henry Mancini

by Jack Bowers
April 25, 2004

Yes, it's “The Pink Panther," “Mr. Lucky" and “Two for the Road," but if anyone can take the late film/television composer Henry Mancini's quasi-jazz and make it swing like a willow in a windstorm, it's two old (well, oldish ) masters like alto saxophonist Phil Woods and trumpeter Carl Saunders. And swing they do, as does the unsung but abundantly talented Denver-based rhythm section of pianist Jeff Jenkins, bassist Ken Walker and drummer Paul Romaine. It's readily ...

Phil Woods: Phil Woods and his European Rhythm Machine at the Montreux Jazz Festival

by Joshua Weiner
December 3, 2003

The consolidation of many record companies into a few mega-conglomerates worries a lot of music lovers, and there is certainly a danger of homogenization to a degree even greater than that already extant. There are up sides, however, and Verve Music Group/Universal’s recent spate of LP reproduction reissues is one. The acquisition of the catalogs of MGM, Cadet, Impulse!, ABC, and other labels has opened up a treasure chest of forgotten albums ripe for rediscovery, and to Verve’s credit, the ...

Jesse Green: Sylvan Treasure

by Dave Nathan
December 2, 2002

More and more jazz CDs these days are being released with a track listing dominated by original works of the principal performer. Jesse Green has followed this path with his latest offering. The pianist augments his regular group with bassist Frank Hauch and drummer Bruce Cox, adding some of the most entertaining and technically dominating veteran jazz artists working in contemporary jazz these days. Guesting with Green is an assembly of extraordinary musicians who are responsible for a significant share ...