Jazz Articles about Various Artists

Various Artists: The Reasons for Christmas Project

by Celeste Sunderland
December 2, 2003

The Poconos... honeymooners flock there in spring to bathe in heart-shaped tubs, families arrive in summer for a swim through glistening lakes, hikers arrive in the fall to see the changing leaves, and in the winter... Well, there's the skiing, the skating, the cuddling by the fire... and there's the area's burgeoning music community, which convened this year to create a delightful Christmas album, The Reasons For Christmas.

The project provided an opportunity for up and coming Poconos area musicians ...

Various Artists: Jazz Yule Love

by Russell Moon
December 2, 2003

At the end of various August 2000 and January 2001 recording sessions, Mack Avenue Records president and producer Stix Hooper asked artists to record their favorite Christmas songs. The result is Jazz Yule Love , twelve tracks by some of jazz's greatest names.

By far the most cheery is Terry Gibbs' “White Christmas," where Gibbs is a Christmas elf on the vibes and Larry Koonse's guitar strumming provides more good humor. Eugene Maslov too has fun on “Angels We Have ...

Various Artists: The Real Bahamas in Music and Song

by AAJ Staff
December 2, 2003

Here's the (hi)story in a nutshell. The Bahamas, a British colony, outlawed slavery in 1838, which meant that any lucky American slaves who could get there would be free, and the predictable outcome transpired. The music they brought contained the very roots of the blues, the connection between spirituals and folk music. And so generations around Nassau took this music as their own and turned it into something that today sounds at once familiar and distant: a new species.

Various Artists: Savoy On Central Avenue

by Jim Santella
December 1, 2003

“Blip Blip” goes the swing music that strolled through the streets of Los Angeles during the Swing Era. This 2-CD compilation features poignant glimpses of what was happening on Central Avenue from 1941 to 1952. It was right after the end of World War II that L.A. experienced its big building boom and a revitalization of the jazz scene. Identical-looking cracker box houses were going up all over town, the Hollywood crowd had discovered L.A.’s jazz scene, and world-class artists ...

Various Artists: Bop Lives!

by C. Michael Bailey
November 18, 2003

Delmark’s 50th Anniversary Collection, Part 6

Delmark continues to celebrate its Golden Anniversary with a release of bebop classics from 1944 through 1998. This collection offers a curious cross-section from early Sir Charles Thompson ("Street Beat," 1945) to late Bud Powell ("Rifftide," 1962). The music captured here is stranger, more organic, and often more authentic than most recorded by the larger labels. This lends the collection a certain piquant sound like sparks cracking out of a wood fire.

Various Artists: Document Chicago - New Jazz and Improvisation

by John Kelman
November 17, 2003

Chicago has always had a sound that differentiated it from other large centres including New York and Los Angeles; decidedly urban, but with a certain avant edge that New York has only fully explored in recent years. Chicago has been mining the depths of the avant-garde since the ‘60s, when the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) arose and brought artists – including founder Muhal Richard Abrams, Henry Threadgill and The Art Ensemble of Chicago – to the ...

Various Artists: Masters of Boogie Piano

by C. Michael Bailey
November 14, 2003

Delmark’s 50th Anniversary Collection, Part 5

The subtext is simple—a perfectly balanced left hand augmented by a bouncing, out-of-control right hand crossed with the 12-bar blues turned from 33&1/3 to 78. All of this equals boogie woogie piano. Speckled Red barely contains himself on “Wilkins Street Stomp," while Meade Lux Lewis strides his way through a fragment of his “Bear Cat Crawl." Red proves to be a more primal force, lacking the finesse of Lewis and making up for it ...