Jazz Articles about Spike Wilner

Spike Wilner: La Tendresse

by Mark Corroto
April 20, 2012

Joy.But having been told that one word reviews aren't sufficient, how about this: Pianist Spike Wilner's disc La Tendresse is pure joy.Wilner can probably best be described as an old soul occupying a modernist corpus. His foundations in ragtime and stride piano inform the music heard here, but like Thelonious Monk, he uses the tradition as the architecture for the anatomy of a modern player. Even his take on “Crepuscule With Nellie," the classic Monk expression ...

Spike Wilner: 3 To Go

by George Kanzler
May 17, 2009

At a small jazz festival a few years ago the advertised theme was a celebration of Duke Ellington's music. But some featured acts, including one highly regarded younger pianist, obviously hadn't taken the theme very seriously, his only begrudging nod to it being a rendition of the jam session standby, “C-Jam Blues," hardly a tune representative of Ellington's artistry. Pianist Spike Wilner demonstrates a better, more thoughtful and creative approach in the two pieces of Ellingtonia included on this urbane ...

Spike Wilner: Late Night: Live At Smalls

by AAJ Staff
September 13, 2004

Michael “Spike" Wilner was a fixture at the late, lamented New York City club Smalls, which was a very hip little place that featured great music by young, rising musicians at reasonable prices. This CD, consisting of live performances by Wilner's quintet and trio, functions as a fitting memorial to that place. The resulting sounds are spirited and always swinging.

Wilner's music is rooted in bebop; the musicians adroitly negotiate the intricate rhythms of bop phrasing. And they ...

Spike Wilner Ensemble: A Blues of Many Colors

by Dan McClenaghan
November 1, 2002

Pianist/composer Spike Wilner got the group together for a month of gigs at Smalls, the jazz club in in New York's Greenwich village, to polish up their chops for the recording session that resulted in A Blues of Many Colors. Time well spent: they put a nice shine on nine of Wilner's compositions.The ensemble is a quintet, piano/bass/drums rhythm behind the rather unusual combination of a guitar/alto sax front line. And an initial impression of the set is ...