Jazz Articles about Steve Swallow

About Steve Swallow

Album Review

It was Gary Burton who brought Steve Swallow--with electric bass in tow--into the teaching ranks of the Berklee College of Music in the early 1970s. Burton had already introduced Swallow's songs to the students, one of whom, a fresh-faced John Scofield, would go on to play and record with both men. Scofield and Swallow's musical partnership has proven the more durable, having begun in the late 1970s. Here, the former teacher and student pick up where they left on the ...

Album Review

Carla Bley: Life Goes On

Read "Life Goes On" reviewed by Mike Jurkovic

by Mike Jurkovic
February 12, 2020

After decades of illuminating and revealing work, reveling in and breaking free of shadows, it is those same shadows that still inspire and inform Carla Bley. Which perhaps explains why the title track of Life Goes On rolls in on the 12-bar like a music obsessed, post-bop cigarette girl absorbing Count Basie at Birdland in the 1950s. So let's take a brief moment to be thankful for the odd, out of time quirks that have brought us to this same ...

Album Review

Carla Bley / Andy Sheppard / Steve Swallow: Life Goes On

Read "Life Goes On" reviewed by Karl Ackermann

by Karl Ackermann
February 7, 2020

Coming off a recent illness, the legendary composer-pianist Carla Bley has her sense of humor and political instincts intact on Life Goes On. The trio album with saxophonist Andy Sheppard and bassist Steve Swallow completes a trilogy which began with Trios in 2013 but the three have been recording together since 1994 with their first album Songs With Legs (WATT/ECM, 1995). In a 2019 interview with German magazine Kaput Bley spoke about the synergy that makes her trio work so ...

Album Review

Carla Bley: Life Goes On

Read "Life Goes On" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
February 4, 2020

Pianist / composer Carla Bley is an inspiring woman. Pianist Paul Bley was inspired to marry her, and record a full album of her compositions: Barrage (ESP-Disk, 1965), in addition to including four of her originals on Open, To Love (ECM Records, 1973). George Russell included her “Bent Eagle" on his Stratusfunk (Riverside Records, 1960). Jimmy Giuffre presented his version of her “Ictus" on his album Thesis (Verve, 1961). And if these examples date the influence of Carla Bley, consider ...

Album Review

Charlie Haden / Liberation Music Orchestra: Time/Life:Songs For The Whales And Other Beings

Read "Time/Life:Songs For The Whales And Other Beings" reviewed by Ian Patterson

by Ian Patterson
May 17, 2017

Formed by bassist Charlie Haden in 1969 to protest America's war in Vietnam/Indochina, the Liberation Music Orchestra has reconvened roughly every ten years to record musical protest in the face of major injustices. Time/Life: Song for the Whales and Other Beings was inspired by concern at global ecological destruction, and to that end the music has a pervasive melancholy colored by the LMO's signature lyricism, and broken up by stirring collective and individual passages. The LMO's personnel has ...

Album Review

Charlie Haden Liberation Music Orchestra: Time / Life

Read "Time / Life" reviewed by Giuseppe Segala

by Giuseppe Segala
December 12, 2016

Due anni dopo la scomparsa di Charlie Haden si pubblica questo ultimo documento della sua Liberation Music Orchestra, un lavoro che il compianto contrabbassista progettò ma che non ebbe modo di portare a compiuta realizzazione. Vessillo del suo impegno civile e umano, l'orchestra era nata nel 1969 raccogliendo una pletora di musicisti straordinari, molti dei quali oggi non sono più con noi: Don Cherry, Gato Barbieri, Dewey Redman, Paul Motian. L'album è forse diverso da quello che sarebbe ...

Album Review

Swallow/Talmor/Nussbaum: Singular Curves

Read "Singular Curves" reviewed by Vincenzo Roggero

by Vincenzo Roggero
December 8, 2014

Tre generazioni a confronto -Steve Swallow classe 1940, Adam Nussbaum 1955, Ohad Talmor 1970 -ma non si direbbe. I tre musicisti suonano come vecchi amici che si incontrano dopo lungo tempo e ritrovano immediatamente il linguaggio della sobrietà, dell'eleganza, della misura, non una frase di troppo, non una parola fuori posto, segni appena accennati, ammiccamenti che valgono un discorso, la rilassatezza di sapersi in buona compagnia. Ma Singular Curves è tutto meno che una registrazione asettica e ...