Jazz Articles about Walter Blanding

About Walter Blanding

Album Review

The Technocats are a Michigan-based co-op septet devoted for the most part to performing the music of fellow Michigander Gregg Hill, who composed every number on the group's 2026 recording, Passionata, including its sure-to-please “bonus" track, “Double Play." The first of Hill's compositions, “Normality," sets the enterprise in motion but in so doing lands slightly on the wrong foot. After that lone misstep, however, Passionata easily qualifies as Comeback Album of the Year, as everything else is beyond ...

Album Review

Randy Napoleon: Waking Dream

Read "Waking Dream" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
October 5, 2025

What greater satisfaction could a teacher have than to see his or her students achieve success--and in their chosen field, no less. On Waking Dream, renowned jazz guitarist and educator Randy Napoleon shares center stage with four fellow guitarists, all of whom are former students in his classes at Michigan State University (MSU) in East Lansing. The guitarists are part of a core group that includes three more MSU faculty members: pianist Rick Roe, bassist Rodney Whitaker ...

Album Review

Randy Napoleon: Waking Dream

Read "Waking Dream" reviewed by Pierre Giroux

by Pierre Giroux
September 8, 2025

In Waking Dream, guitarist Randy Napoleon has assembled a musical family whose shared history fosters a strong sense of cohesion, one that goes beyond the leader's skillful guitar work. Longtime collaborators bassist [[ {{m: Rodney Whitaker, pianist Rick Roe and drummer Quincy Davis form the rhythmic and harmonic foundation, while four additional guitarists , Luke Sittard, Chris Minami, Jocelyn Gould and Ben Turner, create a rich sonic tapestry reminiscent of a modern guitar choir. Throughout the tracks, there are also ...

In Pictures

Walter Blanding, Jr. with the John Toomey Trio at the Attucks Jazz Club

by Mark Robbins
April 21, 2025

Educator, composer, musician, Walter Blanding, Jr is a man for all seasons. Born into a musical family in Cleveland, OH, his parents moved the family to New York in the early '80s where his parents became part of the house band at the Village Gate jazz club. Blanding began playing the saxophone at the age of six and performed with his parents as a teenager He studied at Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School, where he met Wynton Marsalis, ...

Album Review

Randy Napoleon: The Door is Open: The Music of Gregg Hill

Read "The Door is Open: The Music of Gregg Hill" reviewed by Paul Rauch

by Paul Rauch
February 5, 2024

In and around the formidable jazz studies program at Michigan State University is a plethora of jazz talent devoted to instrumental and compositional excellence. Most of this talent is young, benefiting from a wide array of world-class instructors that includes program director Rodney Whitaker and veteran guitarist Randy Napoleon, among other notables. Within this labyrinth of jazz wisdom in the Detroit / Lansing metroplex is composer Gregg Hill, a former truck driver and tech entrepreneur whose performing ambitions were superseded ...

Album Review

Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra Septet with Wynton Marsalis: The Democracy! Suite

Read "The Democracy! Suite" reviewed by Paul Rauch

by Paul Rauch
February 8, 2021

There is an interesting generational divide in perception when it comes to the music of Wynton Marsalis. While many hail his work at Lincoln Center as elevating jazz to its rightful place among the fine arts, others lament the separation from his iconic quartet and quintet work in the 1980's as some sort of jazz treason. What is unquestionable is his virtuosity and eloquence, expressing each note with beauty as the clear priority in his playing as a ...

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Album Review

Walter Blanding: The Olive Tree

Read "The Olive Tree" reviewed by C. Andrew Hovan

by C. Andrew Hovan
November 1, 2000

A new addition to an already heady bunch of tenor stars on Criss Cross, including Walt Weiskopf, Tim Warfield, Seamus Blake, and Ralph Lalama, 28-year-old saxophonist Walter Blanding is making good on the promise he showed back in 1991 on the collective project Tough Young Tenors. His debut as a leader, The Olive Tree, finds Blanding in familiar company, with trumpeter Kisor a buddy from high school and both pianist Farid Barron and bassist Rodney Whitaker chums from the Lincoln ...