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Celebrating centennials at Moncalieri Jazz Festival
by Antonio Baiano
After the two concerts which opened its 20th edition, the Moncalieri Jazz Festival shifted to full throttle with four more great nights of music, each celebrating the centennials of jazz giants born in 1917. The first evening was dedicated to Ella Fitzgerald. Italian-Algerian vocalist Karima performed “Voices," a special project commissioned by the festival, accompanied by the tight-knit trio of Fabio Giachino, Davide Liberti and Ruben Bellavia. The following evening was dedicated to Thelonious Monk with ...
Continue ReadingWho Needs Monk?
by Patrick Burnette
2017 is Thelonious Monk's hundredth anniversary year and as good a time as any to ask whether he has anything to teach young, ambitious, up-and-coming jazz musicians today. Monk's recordings still nurture and entertain countless jazz fans, and the clarity and directness of his conception makes him a wonderful “introductory" artist for newbies. Gigging jazz musicians draw from the well of his compositions to fill their sets, and it's hard to imagine a future where “'Round Midnight" or ...
Continue ReadingC. Michael Bailey’s Best Recordings of 2017
by C. Michael Bailey
This year marks my 20th contributing to AAJ. Twenty years ago, I was 38 years old looking for an outlet for my music writing that had somehow avoided me until I came across an opportunity disguised as a call for articles from one Michael Ricci in Philadelphia. I emailed my review of Art Pepper's San Francisco Samba (Contemporary, 1997) and I have been contributing to AAJ since. That said, I want to tip my hat to my fellow ...
Continue ReadingMisterioso
by Annette Johnson
Music and improvisation—that comes naturally to our ears but what if we say life and improvisation? Huh? Well, life is improvisation is it not? How do we deal best with that period of time between birth and death that we call life? Life is a strange dance partner—it offers one fun, friends, food, love, knowledge, discovery but lets you know throughout that death is part of this deal called life. Does improvisation sound more inviting now? These are ...
Continue ReadingThelonious Monk: Les Liaisons Dangereuses 1960
by Stefano Merighi
Ecco un'occasione in cui una recensione solitamente attacca con “riesumato tesoro musicale nascosto," “ritrovato scrigno sonoro inaspettato," e via di seguito. Invece sarà meglio chiedersi: ma come? Un quartetto di Thelonious Monk (più Barney Wilen ospite) incide dei pezzi per un film di Roger Vadim, alla luce del sole, non certo in incognito, e gli stessi restano in una scatola per 58 anni? E dov'erano dunque produttori, giornalisti, esperti, indifferenti alla pubblicazione di tali gemme? Oppure, più pacatamente: ...
Continue ReadingThelonious Monk: Les Liaisons Dangereuses 1960
by C. Michael Bailey
Few things are as infused with as much romance as are those thought lost. Take the entire myth of blues singer Robert Johnson. He produced 29 shellac sides in the late 1920s that had immeasurable influence on American folk music after and then he disappeared. He did exist, but exists now only as a phantom, a heat apparition rising from a dusty dirt road in some God-forsaken Third-World corner of these United States. Yet his visage beckons like Ahab from ...
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