Jazz Articles about Rob Brown

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Rob Brown: Unknown Skies

by John Sharpe
September 28, 2011

Each year alto saxophonist Rob Brown brings a project to NYC's annual Vision Festival. Among the most raw and compelling was this stellar trio, featuring pianist Craig Taborn and drummer Nasheet Waits, which graced the 2009 gathering but had gone unrecorded, until now. Fortunately the voguish Paris-based Rogue Art imprint has issued a fine live recording from the 2010 Sons d'hiver festival in that city, which regularly presents highlights from the New York jamboree. His chosen format echoes ...

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Rob Brown - Daniel Levin: Natural Disorder

by AAJ Italy Staff
April 15, 2011

Incontro scritto nelle stelle, si legge nelle note di copertina. Perché è stata una serie di fortuite coincidenze (una nevicata fuori stagione, un invito ad un festival in terra d'Albione in difficoltà economica, etc.) a portare i due musicisti negli studi di registrazione della Columbia University, NY, per licenziare Natural Disorder. Titolo quanto mai appropriato perché i sessanta minuti scarsi di libera improvvisazione contenuti nel CD sembrano seguire una certa istintualità del gesto, l'intuizione del momento, una spontaneità e una ...

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Rob Brown Trio: Live at Firehouse 12

by Jeff Stockton
December 11, 2009

Alto saxophonist Rob Brown has the lean physique and worried forehead of a typical free jazz improviser, but through his associations with the leading forces of the downtown scene (including Matthew Shipp and, most fruitfully, William Parker) he has positioned himself as an in-demand sideman as well as a creative and ear-catching leader. He has been a mainstay in the groups put together by Parker and has arguably done his most intensely impressive work with the Quartet, as well as ...

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Right Hemisphere: Right Hemisphere

by Florence Wetzel
May 28, 2009

In the early '80s, saxophonist Rob Brown and pianist Matthew Shipp played as a duo, eventually forming a quartet with William Parker on bass and Whit Dickey on drums and releasing the CD Points on Silkheart in 1990. Flash-forward to the present, where Joe Morris has taken over the bass chair, and the group has released this altogether excellent, eponymous follow-up. The eleven songs explore a wide range of moods, including the meditative “Red in Gray," urgently ...

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William Parker: Double Sunrise Over Neptune

by AAJ Italy Staff
January 26, 2009

L'Oriente incontra l'Occidente, l'Asia incontra l'Africa, i mantra incontrano l'improvvisazione, la forma incontra la libertà, la musica etnica incontra il jazz, la sperimentazione incontra la tradizione. Questo e molto altro accade in Double Sunrise Over Neptune, lavoro orchestrale dell'infaticabile William Parker che, per l'occasione, riunisce sedici musicisti organizzati in sezione ritmica, sezione fiati, quartetto d'archi, voce e strumenti etnici suonati pure dal leader che abbandona l'amato contrabbasso e si dedica alla direzione. E proprio l'accostamento di elementi così eterogenei costituisce ...

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Rob Brown: No More "Mr. Avant Garde"

by John Sharpe
August 25, 2008

Alto saxophonist Rob Brown would feature highly on most people's lists of modern purveyors of reed magic. Leading New York avant-garde bassist William Parker has featured Brown for the last fifteen years, and Brown has been associated, both as sideman and leader, with other well-known modern jazz musicians including Matthew Shipp, Joe Morris and Whit Dickey.

A recent example is the group Right Hemisphere. He has also recorded and worked alongside such luminaries as Cecil Taylor, ...

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Rob Brown: Crown Trunk Root Funk

by John Sharpe
June 5, 2008

One-off assemblages can be hit or miss affairs, but so powerful was saxophonist Rob Brown's ensemble at the 2006 Vision Festival that it was deemed essential that they were brought into the studio. With his carefully controlled use of harmonics and split tones, allied to a quicksilver inventiveness, Brown is one of the most instantly recognizable voices in free jazz today. In pianist Craig Taborn Brown has found a like-minded spirit averse to the obvious route. Taborn's ...