Jazz Articles about Sam Rivers

About Sam Rivers

Album Review

With all proper respect to Sam Rivers' '70s trio with Dave Holland and Barry Altschul, his working band from 1993 to 2006 with bassist Doug Mathews and drummer Anthony Cole is a superior ensemble. NoBusiness Records continues their Sam Rivers Archive Project with their sixth release Caldera. The label has culled music from Rivers' performances from as early as 1971 to this latest live performance, in 2002, captured in New Orleans. In the '60s Rivers found himself smack ...

Album Review

Tony Williams: Life Time & Spring Revisited

Read "Life Time & Spring Revisited" reviewed by Maurizio Comandini

by Maurizio Comandini
May 16, 2022

Tony Williams è uno dei più importanti batteristi della storia. Non solo del jazz, ma della musica in generale. Solitamente questa considerazione, ampiamente condivisa, fa riferimento alla sua lunga esperienza come batterista dei quintetti di Miles Davis della seconda metà degli anni sessanta ed eventualmente al suo ruolo di leader del gruppo Tony Williams Lifetime nato nel 1969 e durato un paio d'anni. Due contesti di assoluta eccellenza che quindi giustificano il giudizio dal quale siamo partiti. Questa ottima ristampa ...

Album Review

Anthony Williams: Life Time & Spring Revisited

Read "Life Time & Spring Revisited" reviewed by Chris May

by Chris May
March 15, 2022

Drummer Tony Williams' first two albums as leader, recorded for Blue Note in 1964 and 1965--Life Time when he was only eighteen years old, Spring when he was nineteen--still sound delightfully fresh all these years after their original release. At the time he made them, Williams was a rising star with Miles Davis' second and third quintets, the first a short-lived unit with saxophonist George Coleman, the second a longer lasting one with Wayne Shorter. One of ...

Album Review

Sam Rivers: Undulation

Read "Undulation" reviewed by John Sharpe

by John Sharpe
November 23, 2021

Sam Rivers, who died in 2011, was one of the luminaries of the avant-garde, a Blue Note artist who played not only with Miles Davis and Cecil Taylor, but also Dizzy Gillespie and Billie Holiday. He lead his own groups for much of his life but also found time to run one of New York's premier lofts during the 1970s. In cooperation with his estate, NoBusiness Records has been digging into his archives, unearthing exceptional unissued live recordings of which ...

Album Review

Sam Rivers Quartet: Undulation

Read "Undulation" reviewed by John Eyles

by John Eyles
September 13, 2021

Undulation is the fifth volume of the NoBusiness label's impressive Sam Rivers Archive Project, following the trio on Emanation and the quintet on Zenith, both issued in 2019, the trio outing Ricochet and the quartet on Braids, both 2020. All volumes comprise previously unreleased live recordings, the first four dating from Boston 1971, Berlin 1977, San Francisco 1978, and Hamburg 1979. Undulations takes us into the '80s, having been recorded at an unknown venue in Florence on May 17th 1981; ...

Album Review

Sam Rivers: Braids

by John Sharpe
April 15, 2021

With the fourth issue in its Sam Rivers archival series, the NoBusiness imprint has unearthed a cracking concert recording of a terrific quartet, completed by bassist Dave Holland, drummer Thurman Barker and tubaist Joe Daley. Very few can match Rivers' breadth of experience, which includes not only with leading lights of the 1960s New Thing like Cecil Taylor, Albert Ayler and Bill Dixon, but also stylistic antecedents like Billie Holiday, Miles Davis and Dizzy Gillespie (the last during the late ...

Album Review

Sam Rivers Quartet: Braids

Read "Braids" reviewed by Mario Calvitti

by Mario Calvitti
February 8, 2021

Nonostante sia stato indiscutibilmente uno dei massimi esponenti della musica afroamericana, il polistrumentista Sam Rivers non ha mai pienamente beneficiato del riconoscimento dovutogli per gli enormi meriti artistici; non quando era in vita, e non ancora oggi, a dieci anni dalla scomparsa. La sua discografia da leader è cominciata molto tardi, quando Rivers era già quarantenne, con una serie di titoli pubblicati su Blue Note negli anni '60, e proseguita con alcune incisioni per la Impulse! nel decennio ...