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Uri Caine Ensemble: The Othello Syndrome
by Martin Longley
Addressing the output of classical composers seems eventually to have become the dominant thrust of keyboardist Uri Caine's work. Schumann, Wagner, Bach, Beethoven and Mahler have fallen to sometimes radical re-posturing of their grand scores. Caine messes with the old assumed interpretations, deliberately distorting the usual expectations of performance by inserting elements of jazz, rock, funk, soul, blues, hip hop and electronica, always utilizing a cast of players from a broad range of backgrounds. Now, it's a ...
Continue ReadingThe Uri Caine Ensemble: The Othello Syndrome
by C. Michael Bailey
Uri Caine, in his own unique way, surveyed music from the Classical era with The Classical Variations (Winter & Winter, 2008) and The Plays Mozart (Winter & Winter, 2007). Caine moves both forward to Late Romantic Opera and back, picking up from Wagner in Venezia (Winter & Winter, 1997), with The Othello Syndrome. The disc title is a play on two things: the Giuseppe Verdi Opera Othello (1887) and the common name for delusional jealousy, both after the Shakespeare protagonist. ...
Continue ReadingUri Caine: The Classical Variations
by Stuart Broomer
The Classical Variations is, in effect, a commemoration of Uri Caine's decade-long series of ambitious and sometimes idiosyncratic explorations of classical repertoire from Bach to Mahler. It combines previously released selections from Caine's Winter & Winter CDs along with unreleased material. A little more than half the material has appeared in previous releases focused on Beethoven, Mozart, Schumann, Wagner and Mahler, while the unreleased, generally recent, material focuses on Bach, Mahler and Verdi. The selection immediately makes ...
Continue ReadingUri Caine: The Classical Variations
by C. Michael Bailey
One of the most attractive things about pianist and composer Uri Caine is his creative unpredictability. There are no musical genres he fears and, moreover, fears to combine in the post-provocative eutectoids. Caine's entire career has been characterized by this unpredictability, but he does have his favorite themes. One of those themes is his recasting of classical music with instruments and instrument combinations not traditionally associated with such music. The Classical Variations is a collection of previously released, unreleased, and ...
Continue ReadingDave Douglas Quintet: Live at the Jazz Standard
by John Kelman
Trumpeter Dave Douglas' a six-night run at New York's Jazz Standard in December, 2006, was relatively revolutionary in the jazz world. Every set, featuring his longstanding quintet, was recorded and made available the following morning in downloadable MP3 format. The twelve sets included nearly everything from The Infinite (RCA, 2002), Strange Liberation (RCA, 2003) and Meaning and Mystery (Greenleaf, 2006), as well as fourteen new pieces. Live at the Jazz Standard collects the best performances of this new material into ...
Continue ReadingUri Caine: Moloch: Book of Angels, Vol. 6
by Celeste Sunderland
Since multi-instrumentalist/composer John Zorn added three hundred new compositions to his Masada songbook in 2004, his label has released seven volumes of Masada Book Two with players including keyboardist Jamie Saft, pianist Sylvie Courvoisier, guitarist Marc Ribot and multi-instrumentalist Koby Israelite all rendering their own interpretations. Moloch, which translates to king, was a deity to whom ancient Middle Eastern worshipers sacrificed their first born. Thankfully, pianist Uri Caine's album isn't as brutal as one might suspect from something ...
Continue ReadingUri Caine - Gust Tsilis: Pure Affection
by AAJ Italy Staff
Da una parte Uri Caine, vulcanico agitatore musicale, eminenza grigia della scena jazzistica della costa orientale statunitense da più di vent’anni, autore di spericolate incursioni nel mondo della musica classica, di collusioni più o meno spinte con il jazz elettrico, presenza fissa in festival, rassegne ed eventi culturali in Italia e in mezzo mondo. Dall’altra Gust Tsilis, misconosciuto specialista di uno strumento ostico come il vibrafono, raramente esposto in concerti ed esibizioni, ma prezioso collaboratore di musicisti come John Abercrombie, ...
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