Jazz Articles about Ray Vega

About Ray Vega

Album Review

Ray Vega & Thomas Marriott East West Trumpet Summit: Coast to Coast

Read "Coast to Coast" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
July 31, 2023

Coast to Coast is the third East West Trumpet Summit recorded by Ray Vega and Thomas Marriott in a musical partnership that has spanned nearly three decades. The years have been kind, and when it comes to playing persuasive jazz, neither Vega nor Marriott appears to have lost a step. Marriott, a native of Seattle, and Vega, New York-born and bred, first met in 1995, and the mutual admiration and respect was immediate. Their first two albums as co-leaders were ...

Album Review

Ray Vega & Thomas Marriott East West Trumpet Summit: Coast to Coast

Read "Coast to Coast" reviewed by Paul Rauch

by Paul Rauch
June 16, 2023

For some people, the whole notion of an east-west summit of anything in jazz brings up the perceived differences over time between American west coast jazz and its east coast counterpart. The basic premise is that jazz on the American west coast is a cousin to the cool jazz movement, a calmer, less soulful part of the tradition that relies more on composition and arrangement than the playing of individual improvisers. East coast jazz is seen more as hard driving, ...

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Album Review

Ray Vega / Thomas Marriott: East-West Trumpet Summit

Read "East-West Trumpet Summit" reviewed by John Barron

by John Barron
May 24, 2010

East-West Trumpet Summit is a rollicking showcase for longtime friends Ray Vega and Thomas Marriott. Vega, a New York native and the elder of the two, has served for many years as a mentor to Seattle's Marriott. The two first met when Marriott was a student at the University of Washington in Seattle, and Vega was in town touring with the late Tito Puente. Friends ever since, the two trumpeters share an affinity for hard-blowing, grounded-in-bebop jazz. New York pianist ...

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Live Review

Ray Vega Quintet at the KC Jazz Club

by Matt Merewitz
May 5, 2004

It's usually a bad thing to review a musician's live show and not own at least one of his records. Especially when his discography as a sideman is easily accessible in most record shops. Unfortunately, I do admit this was the case for myself in going to review Ray Vega's Latin Jazz Quintet at the Kennedy Center's KC Jazz Club. Luckily the following day, his publicist sent me his most recent record on Palmetto Records, and since the show I ...

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Album Review

Ray Vega: Squeeze Squeeze

Read "Squeeze Squeeze" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey

by C. Michael Bailey
February 2, 2004

Ray Vega illustrates what is most attractive about Latin jazz—that is, its inextinguishable spirit and rhythm. And I mean rhythm. From the get-go, Squeeze Squeeze is a Latin love fest, replete with the complex percussion necessary to support the orgy of cross- and counter-rhythms generated by the “head" musicians. Right out of the chute, Mr. Vega crackles like a young Dizzy Gillespie on Wayne Shorter’s “Black Nile," spitting a blue flame of notes in his well-constructed solo. He can also ...

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Album Review

Ray Vega: Squeeze Squeeze

Read "Squeeze Squeeze" reviewed by Norman Weinstein

by Norman Weinstein
January 2, 2004

Trumpeter Ray Vega is a triumphant example of a musician liberated rather than straightjacketed by his Latin jazz expertise. Years of playing in bands as notable as Tito Puente's and Mongo Santamaria's clearly have reaped rewards in terms of his bright, rhythmically punchy, powerhouse delivery. Vega's own description of his current style as “Latin Bop" accurately describes his second disc as a leader on Palmetto. The bow to bop is made perfectly clear by his covers of Wayne ...

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Album Review

Ray Vega: Boperation

by Jack Bowers
January 1, 2000

On Boperation, his second release for Concord Picante, Ray Vega pays homage to the pantheon of legendary bop trumpeters from Diz to Brownie, Fats to Miles — and does so with an invigorating Latin twist. In most cases, the songs chosen were not only played by the trumpeters in question but written by them as well. The exceptions are Benny Golson’s “Whisper Not” (for Art Farmer), Gigi Gryce’s “Social Call” (for Donald Byrd) and the standard “Tangerine” (for Chet Baker ...