Jazz Articles about Tommy Flanagan

About Tommy Flanagan

Album Review

Tommy Flanagan / Jaki Byard: The Magic of 2

Read "The Magic of 2" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
March 19, 2013

One of San Francisco's most famous jazz venues, Keystone Korner, closed in 1983. It was a favorite venue of the top jazz players of the day, and several landmark live albums by pianists Bill Evans and McCoy Tyner, and saxophonists Rahsaan Roland Kirk and Stan Getz, resulted from shows taped inside its hallowed hall.The Magic of 2 showcases the piano talents of Tommy Flanagan (1930-2001) and Jaki Byard (1922-1999), live at the Keystone Korner in 1982, mixing duets ...

Extended Analysis

Tommy Flanagan / Jaki Byard: The Magic of 2

by C. Michael Bailey
March 9, 2013

The story of this previously unreleased performance by pianists Tommy Flanagan and Jaki Byard at San Francisco's famous Keystone Korner begins with its unusual distributing label, Resonance Records. The original brainchild of studio owner George Kalbin, the label exists as part of the larger endeavor, the non-profit Rising Jazz Stars Foundation, dedicated to the discovery and cultivation of the next generation of jazz stars. This aspect of the RJSF produced recordings by “newer" artists: Andreas Oberg's My Favorite Guitars (2008), ...

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Album Review

Wes Montgomery: The Incredible Jazz Guitar of Wes Montgomery

Read "The Incredible Jazz Guitar of Wes Montgomery" reviewed by Chris May

by Chris May
October 25, 2008

Ask a dozen jazz guitar fans for their all-time top guitar albums and The Incredible Jazz Guitar of Wes Montgomery is likely to be high on every list. If it isn't, chances are Montgomery's live set Full House (Riverside, 1962), recorded two years later, will be. With these discs, Indianapolis-born Montgomery (1923-68) gave the guitar its biggest quantum leaps forward, both stylistically and in terms of listener acceptance, since Charlie Christian in the late 1930s/early 1940s and Johnny Smith in ...

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Album Review

Gene Ammons: Boss Tenor

Read "Boss Tenor" reviewed by Douglas Payne

by Douglas Payne
November 1, 1999

This relaxed, swinging quintet session from 1960 isn't the landmark that many of the other releases in this series are. But it is among the finest, most rewarding music tenor great Gene Ammons (1925-74) ever made. Boss Tenor -- easily confused with Boss Tenors , the 1961 Verve record Ammons cut with Sonny Stitt -- is probably included here due to Ammons's enduring and unprecedented affiliation with Prestige. Ammons recorded over 50 albums for the label from 1950, around the ...

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Album Review

Tommy Flanagan: Sunset and the Mockingbird

by Jack Bowers
October 1, 1998

First, a confession. There are a handful of contemporary Jazz pianists I could listen to all night without the least trace of boredom or fatigue. Oscar Peterson, of course. Kenny Barron. Barry Harris. Oliver Jones. Billy Taylor. And Tommy Flanagan — which should give the reader an inkling of how I feel about Tommy’s Blue Note debut, Sunset and the Mocking Bird, recorded on his 67th birthday at New York City’s Village Vanguard. This is a trio session, and what ...

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Album Review

Tommy Flanagan Trio: Sea Changes

by Chris M. Slawecki
October 1, 1997

Sea Changes is an honest-to-god jazzconcept albumfrom composer / pianist Tommy Flanagan. Born in 1930 Detroit, but known more resonantly as a ‘Big Apple’ jazzman, where by the mid-1950s he had moved to groove alongside the likes of Coleman Hawkins, Miles Davis and Oscar Pettiford. Flanagan was frequently Bud Powell’s replacement at Birdland, and has also worked extensively with vocalists Tony Bennett and for nearly a dozen years (off and on) with Ella Fitzgerald. For the past two decades he ...