Jazz Articles about Ron Carter

Mike Holober and the Gotham Jazz Orchestra: Thought Trains

by Robert R. Calder
March 23, 2005

Mike Holober's not just another pianist working within long-established post-Bill Evans methods, he's one of the rare very individually creative ones. Given his more monumental approach, his Gotham Jazz Orchestra can seem something of an extension of his piano work. His orchestration sometimes fills out a piano conception, sometimes interacts with his playing, piano concerto fashion. A band member's solo will sometimes have the full orchestra, sometimes the at times equally full-sounding rhythm section, in accompaniment. Planned and grand. With ...

McCoy Tyner: Counterpoints

by AAJ Staff
December 7, 2004

McCoy Tyner has basically been making the same insanely luscious and gorgeously dense modal music for nearly 40 years now. Which means that Counterpoints , which consists of five unreleased live tracks from a 1978 Tokyo concert (others were issued in 1979 on the currently unavailable Passion Dance ), is unlikely to offer anything new to anybody who's got more than a passing familiarity with the legendary pianist's work. That said, the sound is clear, Tyner is in ...

Mike Holober and the Gotham Jazz Orchestra: Thought Trains

by John Kelman
October 23, 2004

Originally recorded in '96, years before Mike Holober's début small group recording Canyon (Sons of Sound, '03), Thought Trains is only now seeing the light of day, but it continues to assert the pianist/composer/arranger as a dominant new force on the New York scene. And while the larger ensemble context of Thought Trains limits the amount of spontaneous interplay that was prevalent on Canyon , it makes up for that kind of unrestrained exploration with sharp arrangements that make full ...

Mike Holober and the Gotham Jazz Orchestra: Thought Trains

by Dan McClenaghan
October 16, 2004

There's something about trains, the metronomic, ringing clink-clack of metal wheels on metal track, the fanfare of the whistle, the rhythm and rumble of the coaches being propelled across a countryside. Duke Ellington loved trains, in a day when he and the band used the form of transportion to get from gig to gig. Think of “Take the A Train" and “Track 360." Pianist/arranger/composer Mike Holober loves trains, too, as his second outing as leader attests--the big band set Thought ...

Donald Harrison: Heroes

by Jeff Stockton
October 5, 2004

Ron Carter, one of altoist Donald Harrison's heroes and the primary bassist on this recording, makes the point that Harrison comes from New Orleans, but doesn't insist that he does. Harrison approaches his tradition with a pure heart, and from his apprenticeship with Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers in the mid '80s through his own leadership in the '90s, he has evolved an historical idiom into an absolutely contemporary, individual style. The title track kicks things off ...

Miles Davis - Seven Steps: The Complete Columbia Recordings, 1963-1964

by Colin Fleming
September 22, 2004

Seven Steps : Review #1 | Review #2 | Review #3 | Discuss | Poll

Miles Davis Seven Steps: The Complete Columbia Recordings Of Miles Davis, 1963-1964 Columbia Legacy 2004

One of the more undervalued phases in Miles Davis' career, the years 1963-64 are typically deemed a fallow period, marked by a few mildly inventive studio creations and scattershot radio broadcasts. Davis' transformations were often stylistic, but this collection puts the bulk ...

Miles Davis - Seven Steps: The Complete Columbia Recordings, 1963-1964

by Jim Santella
September 22, 2004

Seven Steps : Review #1 | Review #2 | Review #3 | Discuss | Poll

Miles Davis Seven Steps: The Complete Columbia Recordings Of Miles Davis, 1963-1964 Columbia Legacy 2004

Seven discs paint a pretty good picture of the sound that Miles Davis gave us back then.

Some of the master's mid-'60s material has not been previously issued. As had been the case time and again, the Miles ...