Jazz Articles about Steve Reid

Arthur Blythe Quartet: Live From Studio Rivbea, July 6, 1976

by John Sharpe
January 12, 2025

Saxophonist Arthur Blythe arrived in New York City in 1974 with a gorgeous tone and a fully formed conception. Having featured in the ensembles of pianist Horace Tapscott in his native LA, he first caught the ear in the Big Apple after his recruitment into the bands of drummer Chico Hamilton and pianist/composer Gil Evans. This gem from Sam Rivers' Studio Rivbea archive constitutes his debut as a leader, recorded some seven months before the previous contender for that title, ...

Steve Reid: Staying in the Rhythms

by Ian Patterson
December 24, 2007

A sell-out crowd and a standing ovation at the London Jazz Festival concert to launch Daxaar (Domino Records, 2007) is a sure sign that veteran drummer Steve Reid is enjoying something of an Indian summer. Since teaming up with electronics improviser Kieran Hebden in 2006, Domino Records has released three albums of their cutting-edge collaborations, and Steve Reid has reached a whole new audience with his African-inspired, jazz improvisations.

In a sense, Reid and Hebden are revisiting the ...

Steve Reid Ensemble: Daxaar

by AAJ Italy Staff
December 14, 2007

Tornato negli anni più recenti all'attenzione di critica e pubblico, in particolare grazie alla collaborazione con il musicista elettronico Kieran Hebden [Fourtet] [leggi la recensione di The Exchange Sessions Voll. 1 & 2], l'ormai sessantenne batterista Steve Reid ha un rapporto speciale con l'Africa. Dopo avere debuttato giovanissimo dietro i tamburi di Martha & The Vandellas - e con una carriera che spazia da Sun Ra al Miles Davis di Tutu, passando per Chaka Khan e Archie Shepp - il ...

Steve Reid Ensemble: Daxaar

by Ian Patterson
December 11, 2007

Forty years have passed since drummer Steve Reid journeyed for three years in Africa, learning the roots of rhythm with master percussionist Guy Warren and in the band of Fela Kuti. For Steve Reid, returning to the continent of rhythm to record Daxaar in Senegal is no mere nostalgia trip: “The first time I went to learn and this time I was just going to give and enjoy, and find out what new thing we could discover together. The result ...

Steve Reid Ensemble: Daxaar

by Chris May
November 5, 2007

At age 62, most people are slowing down a little, taking fewer risks and carefully pre-planning their activities. Not so Steve Reid. The Bronx-born drummer, whose recording debut, aged 19, was on Martha & The Vandellas' iconic “Dancing In The Street," and who went on to work with many of the “new thing" movers and shakers of the late 1960s and early 1970s, still lives by the freewheeling, devil-may-care zeitgeist which prevailed during his formative years. He trusts his instincts ...

Kieran Hebden & Steve Reid: The Exchange Sessions Voll. 1 & 2

by AAJ Italy Staff
May 2, 2006

Dopo la scorpacciata dello scorso decennio - che come tutte le “corse all'oro" espressive lascia sul campo una grande quantità di vinti oltre alle tracce indelebili dei vincitori - si erano un po' raffreddate in questi ultimi tempi le “relazioni pericolose" tra elettronica e jazz, tra strumentisti e djs. Così, dopo che abbiamo digerito e metabolizzato alcune delle possibilità di elaborazione di un linguaggio in cui gli elementi afroamericani sciolgano il rigore del beat digitale e ne coinvolgano la strepitosa ...

Steve Reid Ensemble: Spirit Walk

by Chris May
October 22, 2005

An uber-visceral, trance-centric celebration of Great Black Music ancient-to-modern--mixing up free improv, Afrobeat, the astral jazz of Pharoah Sanders and Alice Coltrane, North African Sufi music, early '70s electric Miles, chicken shack B3 grooves, Gil Scott Heron and the Last Poets, and more, all of it laced with real time electronica--Spirit Walk is serious mindbending business, as in free your ass and your mind will follow.

Led by the Bronx-born, currently Swiss-based, itinerant US drummer Steve Reid and recorded in ...