Jazz Articles about Sean Smith

About Sean Smith

Album Review

Kate McGarry + Keith Ganz Ensemble: What to Wear in the Dark

Read "What to Wear in the Dark" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey

by C. Michael Bailey
October 22, 2021

Being taken for granted is the greatest tribute and worst slight to any artist. Kate McGarry has made music that brilliantly colors outside the lines since her release, Show Me (Palmetto Records) in 2003 (there was a 1992 standards release, Easy To Love (Vital Records) that is out-of-print). Her career has provided five provocatively thoughtful and inventive recordings between that release and 2018's The Subject Tonight Is Love (Binxtown Records). Listeners have come to expect something a little different from ...

Album Review

Kate McGarry + Keith Ganz Ensemble: What to Wear in the Dark

Read "What to Wear in the Dark" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
October 19, 2021

Let us start with a nod to Steely Dan, the rock/jazz group headed up by Walter Becker and Donald Fagen, a pair of tunesmiths who hit a career zenith in the early 1970s with albums like Can't Buy A Thrill (1972), Countdown To Ecstasy (1973), Pretzel Logic (1974) and Aja (1974), all on ABC Records. The group drew in top jazz artists to help craft their albums—saxophonists Wayne Shorter and Tom Scott, guitarists Larry Carlton and Lee Ritenour, drummers Steve ...

Album Review

The Humanity Quartet: Humanity

Read "Humanity" reviewed by Dr. Judith Schlesinger

by Dr. Judith Schlesinger
December 21, 2018

This release is from four veteran, first-call jazz instrumentalists who are all concerned about the worldwide loss of humanity (hence, the title of both the quartet and the CD), and wanted to demonstrate what can happen when grown-ups truly connect. As co-producer, bassist, and composer Sean Smith explains in his articulate and passionate liners, ..."the Humanity Quartet represents a fresh sharing of ideas and feelings that bring people together in an increasingly divided world." While neither he nor the others ...

Album Review

The Humanity Quartet: Humanity

by Jack Bowers
December 2, 2018

Music with a message? With a name like the Humanity Quartet and a CD titled Humanity, one might certainly presume no less. Music designed to help save the world from itself? Well, that's an exceedingly tall order. The Humanity Quartet, bassist Sean Smith writes, was indeed created with such a lofty goal in mind, “recognizing the need to bring mankind together through music." Jazz, he further argues, “is music for all people to enjoy. It is the sound of freedom. ...

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Album Review

Sean Smith Quartet: Trust

by Dan Bilawsky
May 9, 2011

Trust is a key element in any successful relationship. Spouses have to trust one another in their day-to-day lives and children have to trust that their parents will be there for them, no matter what happens. Trust between close friends is often a given and, while we don't always think about it, trust between band mates is at the core of any successful musical partnership. In jazz, more than most forms of music, the musicians have to feel comfortable that ...

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Album Review

Billy Lester: Visceral

Read "Visceral" reviewed by Francis Lo Kee

by Francis Lo Kee
November 17, 2009

On this set of five standards and one original, pianist Billy Lester displays a strong original approach to jazz improvisation. He also leads a flexible, yet muscular trio, that moves along with him with telepathic skill. Lester has a wide range of approaches: single-note right-hand lines, dissonant block chords, left-hand bass runs that move in counterpoint to the right hand (and his use of the low register piano is fairly unique to most of what you hear ...

Album Review

John Stetch Trio: Bruxin'

by AAJ Italy Staff
November 13, 2006

Canadese di nascita ma d’origini ucraine, John Stech è uno dei pianisti più interessanti dell’attuale scena jazz d’oltreoceano. Un ampio ventaglio di esperienze caratterizza il suo composito stile, che spazia tra l’amore per Monk e le influenze del jazz orchestrale tradizionale. Con Bruxin’ sono ben nove le sue incisioni da leader, che si impongono per un pensiero armonico poliedrico e complesso, dalle scansioni libere ed aperte. Lo testimoniano in modo inequivocabile le dieci tracce di questo disco, contrassegnato da una ...