Jazz Articles about Rez Abbasi

About Rez Abbasi

Album Review

Rez Abbasi: A Throw of Dice by The Silent Ensemble

Read "A Throw of Dice by The Silent Ensemble" reviewed by Alberto Bazzurro

by Alberto Bazzurro
March 23, 2021

Rez Abbasi, classe 1965, pakistano di nascita ma californiano d'adozione fin dalla più tenera età, è il principale protagonista di questo album (che del resto reca la sua firma in calce), giocato nel segno di una musica di sicuro referente jazzistico, però con forti infiltrazioni etniche, com'è del resto usuale nel chitarrista (del quale, en passant, segnaliamo anche Oasis, a doppia firma con l'arpista francese Isabelle Olivier, inciso in quartetto su Enja l'anno dopo questo A Throw of Dice, 2018 ...

Interview

Rez Abbasi: On balancing picture with music and shifting into Django mode

by Friedrich Kunzmann
October 19, 2020

To really distinguish oneself in today's vast universe of guitarists, even within the confines of jazz, more and more resembles a Sisyphus task. When so much has been said and done, a specific tone or distinctive vocabulary alone no longer suffice to set an artist apart from the crowd. It is only through the sum of the different parts--various technical, aesthetic and even philosophical ones--that a musician is able to claim a place among the original voices on the instrument. ...

Album Review

Rez Abbasi: Django-shift

Read "Django-shift" reviewed by Friedrich Kunzmann

by Friedrich Kunzmann
August 31, 2020

Talking about shifting. American guitarist Rez Abbasi seems capable of shifting shape and changing form from one project to the next like a creature from a J.R.R. Tolkien adventure—almost beyond recognition. If it weren't for the guitarist's inspired fret fingerings and rushed scale runs giving him his utterly unique spark. Between much praised quintet recording Unfiltered Universe (Whirlwind Recordings, 2017) and the Indian-infused collaboration Indo-Pak Coalition comprised of himself, Dan Weiss and Rudresh Mahanthappa releasing Agrima (Self Produced, ...

Album Review

Rez Abbasi: Django-shift

Read "Django-shift" reviewed by Karl Ackermann

by Karl Ackermann
August 14, 2020

Django Reinhardt's music is so ubiquitous that it's easy to forget his career was relatively brief. The gypsy guitarist/composer had recorded hundreds of 78s and acetates before he died of a stroke in 1953 at age forty-three. On many early sides, he played a six-string banjo-guitar hybrid tuned in the standard tuning of a guitar. Norman Granz produced the only full LP Reinhardt session two months before the artist passed. Along with over twenty posthumous compilation releases, Nuages (Verve, 1953) ...

Album Review

Amina Figarova: Persistence

Read "Persistence" reviewed by Edward Blanco

by Edward Blanco
April 24, 2020

Veteran jazz pianist Amina Figarova embarks on a bold new step with her genre-bending Persistence, creating a new sound for the pianist with music that produces an electric-influenced groove mixing funk-jazz, jazz fusion, hip-hop, classical and R&B rhythms found on this new exploratory album. After two decades leading an acoustic sextet, her new quintet ensemble, Edition 113 (named after the block where she and her and husband, flautist Bart Platteau make their home) was assembled specifically to perform the eclectic ...

Album Review

Isabelle Olivier / Rez Abassi: OASIS

by Jerome Wilson
April 18, 2020

The combination of acoustic guitar and harp is seldom heard in jazz and improvisational circles but it is explored here in exciting fashion by harpist Isabelle Olivier and guitarist Rez Abbasi. Accompanied by Prabhu Edouard on tabla and David Paycha on drums, they bring their instruments' sounds together in a variety of musical textures ranging from intense to contemplative. The guitar and harp shimmer delicately together on “Cherry Blossom" and swoop and dive with swagger on their version ...

Album Review

Rez Abbasi: OASIS

by Mark Corroto
March 8, 2020

Guitarist Rez Abbasi and harpist Isabelle Olivier's OASIS (an acronym for Olivier Abbasi Sound In Sound) is embodiment of fusion. Not the variety you may recognize as jazz-rock fusion, more like fusion cooking, for example Korean-Mexican or sushi-pizza. Okay, not sushi-pizza, but you get the idea. Olivier and Abbasi are pulling together jazz, Indian-Pakistani, and European classical music without compromising the character of each. Abbasi, a Pakistani-American is better known than his French partner (who lives part time ...