Jazz Articles about Ran Blake

Ran Blake: Lurking in the Shadows

by Tod Smith
June 8, 2009

If you close your eyes while listening to Ran Blake's Driftwoods (Tompkins Square, 2009), you may find yourself transported into the grainy, low-key black and white world of a 1940s or '50s classic noir film. Try to leave the theater and something quietly, without much fanfare draws you back into the story. This is the music of Ran Blake. While the vaguely familiar exists, there's enough hidden in the shadows of Driftwoods to make each listen seem like a world ...

Ran Blake: Driftwoods

by AAJ Italy Staff
May 25, 2009

Unico originale erede di Thelonius Monk, Ran Blake ne ha raccolto lo spirito e sviluppato il mondo espressivo, distanziandosi da quei colleghi che ne hanno reinterpretato i brani cercando un'improbabile connessione. Anche se esistono varie differenze col pianista di Rocky Mount (soprattutto il legame con la tradizione classica europea e la condivisione dell'estetica Third Stream) Blake ne condivide l'approccio “verticale," armonicamente dissonante e l'accentuazione dei contrasti timbrici e di volume. Altro punto di contatto - forse meno considerato - è ...

Ran Blake: Driftwoods

by Henry Smith
January 22, 2009

Ever since pianist Ran Blake released his debut recordings on The Newest Sound Around (RCA, 1962) with vocalist Jeanne Lee, he has been a leading voice in the original interpretation of classic standards. With the solo outing Driftwoods, Blake dedicates an entire album to the interpretation of songs popularized by his favorite singers, a list which includes such divergent voices as Billie Holiday, Mahalia Jackson, and Hank Williams.

Blake's noir-like approach to the piano, with his ...

Ran Blake - David Fabbris: Indian Winter

by AAJ Italy Staff
February 27, 2007

Ventitre frammenti sonori, ventitre fotogrammi, non solo per la provenienza cinematografica di molti dei titoli presenti in Indian Winter, ma soprattutto per la capacità di evocare con poche pennellate di note, immagini e sensazioni di grande impatto emotivo. Il pianismo di Ran Blake è difficilmente etichettabile, rispettoso della tradizione, con riusciti omaggi, tra gli altri, a musicisti come Duke Ellington e Horace Silver, ma assolutamente originale nella sua concezione esecutiva, fatta di minimi impulsi, sequenze narrative accennate, dissolvenze incrociate e ...

Ran Blake: All That Is Tied

by Norman Weinstein
April 5, 2006

Of the plethora of pianist/composers who have extended the style of Thelonious Monk, none has been as relentlessly exploratory and consistently thoughtful in his experiments as Ran Blake. On this session recorded four decades after his first solo piano album on ESP, Blake revisits material he's recorded in the past, but Blake has never remotely repeated his interpretations routinely. At the age of 70, he will hardly routinize his repetoire now. Blake performs the twelve numbers with ...

Ran Blake: All That Is Tied

by Jerry D'Souza
March 13, 2006

Ran Blake is still spry at 70. The pianist's thoughts are as fertile as one could ever wish them to be, and he makes fulsome use of them as he enunciates with authority on All That Is Tied, a solo recording made forty years after his first album. Time has not stilled his passion; it still beats strongly within him, along with his sense for discovery. Blake is always alert for a new direction which will spring a surprise. His ...

Ran Blake: From Music to Film and Back

by AAJ Staff
January 9, 2004

By Matana Roberts More than a four-decade career as a recording artist, a winner of numerous iconic awards (including being named a Mac Arthur fellow in 1988) with more than 30 recordings to his credit collaborating with artists creatively diverse as saxophonist/composer Anthony Braxton, pianist Jaki Byard, and saxophonist Ricky Ford, pianist Ran Blake’s music still sounds fresh, alive and unmistakably matchless. In the following interview Ran really was true to form - full of wisdom and ...