Jazz Articles about Sam Weber

About Sam Weber

Album Review

Sivan Arbel's compositional practice is alternately “nerdy," as the singer-composer describes it, and “stream of consciousness." In her studio, she labors meticulously over the nuts and bolts: rhythmic patterns, harmonic changes, melodic turns. Once the fundamental elements are in place, though, she sits at her piano and “squeezes the sponge," improvising words and music freely, reaching into deeper levels of consciousness. She records everything and then listens back, editing and refining what she has created. Her scores for Oneness are ...

Album Review

Dan Pugach Big Band: Bianca

by Jack Bowers
April 5, 2024

Dan Pugach is an Israeli-born, New York-based drummer who doubles (quite well) as composer and arranger on Bianca, his second recording for Outside In Music. Pugach anchors a splendid big band comprised of some of the New York area's finest musicians on an album whose subtitle is “Music for Paws and Persistence." The “paws" were those of the Pugach family's rescue pit-bull, Bianca, who passed away in 2019 and left a gaping hole in their lives, as ...

Album Review

Russell Kranes/Alex Levine/Sam Weber/Jay Sawyer: Anchor Points

Read "Anchor Points" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
December 7, 2023

No leader is given on Anchor Points, simply the names of the four musicians who comprise the group on its debut recording. This is truly a co-op enterprise by jazz artists who have been performing together for a number of years in and around the New York City area. The studio session is divided roughly in half, with four numbers by a quartet balancing four others by a drummerless trio, a nod to similar groups once led ...

Album Review

Caroline Davis & Rob Clearfield PERSONA: Anthem

Read "Anthem" reviewed by Neri Pollastri

by Neri Pollastri
March 2, 2021

Disco di jazz moderno composto tutto da originali, con l'esclusione di “Miss Ann," omaggio a Eric Dolphy, Anthem ruota attorno alle personalità dei due leader, la sassofonista Caroline Davis e il pianista Rob Clearfield. Entrambi non ancora quarantenni, i due non sono ancora artisti di primissimo piano, ma hanno alle spalle diversi album a proprio nome e vantano collaborazioni interessanti: la Davis era ospite nell'ultimo disco pubblicato da Lee Konitz prima della scomparsa, Old Song New; Clearfield lo abbiamo apprezzato ...

Album Review

Ashley Daneman: Beauty Indestructible

Read "Beauty Indestructible" reviewed by Angelo Leonardi

by Angelo Leonardi
October 2, 2015

È un disco che colpisce, questo di Ashley Daneman, e merita tutta la nostra attenzione. Per certi aspetti ricorda quello di Becca Stevens di qualche anno fa: entrambe sono affascinanti e personali singer/songwriter che attualizzano la lezione di Joni Mitchell e Laura Nyro in percorsi eclettici, assegnando al jazz un ruolo significativo. Qualcosa che le altre cantautrici bianche americane hanno fatto raramente. Ogni debutto ha la sua storia, fatta di passione, anni di studio, prime ...

Album Review

Ashley Daneman: Beauty Indestructible

Read "Beauty Indestructible" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey

by C. Michael Bailey
January 20, 2015

The most important thing that singers/educators Kate McGarry and Theo Bleckmann impart to their students is the direction to define his or her own vocal trajectory. The lesson was readily honored by Nicky Schrire on her Space and Time (Magenta Label Group, 2013). Vocalist Ashley Daneman also took that message to heart after her study with the pair and released the present and exceptional Beauty Indestructible. Forged from a harrowing “Long Night of the Soul" (apologies to ...

Album Review

Ashley Daneman: Beauty Indestructible

Read "Beauty Indestructible" reviewed by Bruce Lindsay

by Bruce Lindsay
January 16, 2015

During 2013 singer and songwriter Ashley Daneman and her husband, trumpeter Benje Daneman, raised the funding for Beauty Indestructible via 200 Kickstarter contributors. To each and every one of those contributors, “Thank You." For Beauty Indestructible is a striking debut, full of strong, memorable, songs and performances.Every song is a Daneman original. She's a self-declared fan of '70s singer-songwriters--..."raised on Carole King and Joni Mitchell..." as she puts it. Some of the finest moments on Beauty Indestructible seem ...