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John La Barbera Big Band: Grooveyard
by Jack Bowers
Composer/arranger John La Barbera has been at the top of his game for more than half a century, and Grooveyard is simply another example of his undiminished artistry. Besides arranging everything--superbly, as always--La Barbera wrote six of the session's ten charming songs, escorting other treasures by Carl Perkins, Dave Brubeck, Curtis Fuller and Elvin Jones. As he writes his handsome and colorful big-band charts, La Barbera is always careful to observe Rule No. 1: they have to ...
Continue ReadingThe John La Barbera Big Band: Grooveyard
by Nicholas F. Mondello
The geometry, if you will, of a terrific big band recording is such that the three major elements--the players, the arrangements, and the performance--balance in every regard. Grooveyard from the John La Barbera Big Band is such an offering. The album features ten masterfully selected, arranged, and performed selections, each containing outstanding section, solo, and ensemble playing. Wes Montgomery's “Grooveyard" launches a hip, swinging first course in which tenor man Pat La Barbera and guitarist Brandon Coleman ...
Continue ReadingRufus Reid and Remembering Dr. Lonnie Smith
by Joe Dimino
We begin the 721st Episode of Neon Jazz with the legendary bassist Rufus Reid with the song “Sweet Loraine." The jazz world lost an icon, a master and a friend in Dr. Lonnie Smith and we pay tribute to his life through song and an interview conducted with the show some years back. This hour is full of great tunes from the likes of Leon Lee Dorsey, Jakob Bro and Larry Fuller. There is new music out from the very ...
Continue ReadingFrank Kimbrough: Monk's Dreams: The Complete Compositions of Thelonious Sphere Monk
by Angelo Leonardi
Fino a che punto può spingersi la rilettura del songbook monkiano senza alterare l'estetica e la profondità emotiva del suo autore? Le rivisitazioni degli ultimi decenni hanno privilegiato l'esaltazione dei suoi tratti asimmetrici (le melodie sghembe, i conflitti ritmici, le armonie dissonanti) usando quei brani come pretesto per esplorazioni d'avanguardia. Quando si è usato quel repertorio in chiave mainstream (come palestra per sequenze d'assoli sulle armonie) se n'è svuotata la specificità, l'essenza profonda. Molti hanno usato l'uno ...
Continue ReadingFrank Kimbrough: Monk's Dreams: The Complete Compositions of Thelonious Sphere Monk
by Mark Sullivan
There were scores of tributes the legendary pianist and composer Thelonious Monk in 2017, the centennial of his birth. But only guitarist Miles Okazaki's six- volume solo guitar album Work: The Complete Compositions of Thelonious Monk (Self Produced, 2018) gave a clear presentation of all seventy of Monk's compositions. Pianist Frank Kimbrough's similarly comprehensive set is riskier in some ways, as the grouping of jazz quartet with a horn as the lead instrument (usually saxophone) is the one that Monk ...
Continue ReadingFrank Kimbrough: Monk's Dreams: The Complete Compositions of Thelonious Sphere Monk
by Victor L. Schermer
Thelonious Monk, though controversial in his time, was a brilliant, innovative pianist and composer with a unique way of conceiving the music that was yet remarkably simpatico with standard forms. Many of his compositions (they are much more than “tunes," though I'll use that word here as shorthand) have become a regular part of the jazz repertoire, and it is only natural that around the 2017 centennial celebration of Monk's birth, there would be heightened interest in his music.
Continue ReadingRufus Reid: Terrestrial Dance
by Karl Ackermann
Rufus Reid is one of a handful of true renaissance figures in the arts. The bassist and composer has been an active presence in the jazz world since the 1970s and has recorded more than a dozen albums as a leader and in groups with Dexter Gordon, Andrew Hill, The Thad Jones / Mel Lewis Quartet, Kenny Barron, Stan Getz, J. J. Johnson, Lee Konitz, Jack Dejohnette and many others. Reid has written for strings, jazz ensembles of varying sizes, ...
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