Jazz Articles about Randy Jackson

About Randy Jackson

Liner Notes

Jean-Luc Ponty: Individual Choice

by Peter Rubie
April 21, 2023

By 1982, jazz violinist Jean-Luc Ponty had established an enviable reputation as a pioneer in jazz-rock and jazz fusion. He began as a young bebop player in the late 1950s with little interest in becoming another swing or gypsy style violinist. It was the “sheets of sound" music of John Coltrane that spoke loudest to him. By the early 1970s Ponty was recording and touring with rock composer Frank Zappa, and playing with John McLaughlin's Mahavishnu Orchestra, as well as ...

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Album Review

Tom Coster: Ivory Expedition

Read "Ivory Expedition" reviewed by Dave Hughes

by Dave Hughes
November 1, 1999

This CD presents two albums recorded by Tom Coster in 1981 and 1983. These sessions took place just a few years after Coster's six-year stint with Santana. Many hints of the music Coster composed and performed with Santana show through on some songs, such as the ballads "Magical Moments" and "I Give My Heart to You", although guitarist Joaquin Lievano (fresh from three years of high-octane fusion shredding with Jean-Luc Ponty) often lends the tunes a harder-edged fusion bite than ...

287

Album Review

Tom Coster: Ivory Expedition

Read "Ivory Expedition" reviewed by Ed Kopp

by Ed Kopp
December 1, 1998

Back in the early '80s, when I was a beer-swilling, poverty-stricken, disco-hating, post-college naif, my favorite kind of music was jazz-fusion. My early-80s self was particularly smitten by Tom Coster's first two solo records. I regretted having to sell those albums to a graduate student prior to one of my many cross-town moves. When I learned this summer that Fantasy was reissuing both albums on a single CD, I thought it might be fun to see if the music still ...