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Playdate: Playdate
by Dan Bilawsky
While children spend after school-hours and weekends working on homework and spending time with their families, they also have play dates. They get together with other like-minded friends to let loose and blow off some steam. Musicians often do the same thing and, appropriately enough, three of the five performers on Playdate have been friends since high school. Guitarist Amanda Monaco, saxophonist Wayne Escoffery and pianist Noah Baerman have a shared history, having studied music together in Connecticut, and they've ...
Continue ReadingWayne Escoffery: Uptown
by Woodrow Wilkins
Bob Mintzer, Kirk Whalum and Ada Rovatti are just a few of today's stunning tenor sax players. Wayne Escoffery can be added to their company. Escoffery, 34, is a native of London who moved to the United States with his mother at an early age. He enjoyed singing, and was a member of the New Haven Trinity Boys Choir in Connecticut. He eventually turned to the saxophone, and has performed with a diverse array of bandleaders and ensembles, ...
Continue ReadingWayne Escoffery: Uptown
by Joel Roberts
On Uptown, his fifth album as a leader, the impressive 34-year-old tenor saxophonist {Wayne Escoffery employs an old-fashioned soul jazz lineup of sax, Hammond B-3 organ, electric guitar and drums. But don't expect to hear the sort of bluesy “uptown" jams associated with classic soul jazz tenors like Gene Ammons, Eddie “Lockjaw" Davis or Stanley Turrentine. While he's a hard-swinging tenor with a big, warm tone, Escoffery's passion, expressiveness and long, flowing solos, as well as his thoughtful, forward-thinking compositions, ...
Continue ReadingWayne Escoffery: Hopes and Dreams
by George Kanzler
There's a distinguished history of tenor saxophonist and vibes player combos in jazz, including Lucky Thompson/Milt Jackson and Harold Land/Bobby Hutcherson. But those combos featured bands with piano. Tenor Wayne Escoffery and vibraphonist Joe Locke put more emphasis on their teamwork by eliminating the piano in Escoffery's Veneration quartet--quintet on three tracks featuring guest trumpeter Tom Harrell. The band's name alludes to the leader's desire to “play the music of what I consider the masters." There's a ...
Continue ReadingWayne Escoffery: Past And Future
by Jason Crane
Saxophonist Wayne Escoffery has plotted a smart course to success in jazz, one based on strong educational foundations and constant exposure to the best musicians in the business. From his early days with the Jazzmobile and Artists Collective to his time at The Hartt School and the Thelonious Monk Institute, Escoffery used every opportunity to grow as an improviser, composer and bandleader. His new album is Veneration (Savant, 2007). All About Jazz contributor Jason Crane talked with Escoffery about Jackie ...
Continue ReadingWayne Escoffery: Veneration: Live At Smoke
by Craig W. Hurst
As the title implies, saxophonist Wayne Escoffery's Veneration is a recording that pays tribute to the art of modern jazz. Recorded live at the Smoke night club in New York City, it perhaps captures the essence of jazz more authentically as a performance art. That is, music created in the moment, freshly honed in the presence of an audience, creating an experience akin to walking a tightrope without a net. That additional edge of a live performance often captures improvising ...
Continue ReadingWayne Escoffery: Veneration: Live At Smoke
by Budd Kopman
In jazz, the mainstream is defined by what the music is not, or lacks. It is jazz as a style, rather than an aesthetic, and is not a “modern" concept. Many musicians of the Swing era, when confronted with the avant-garde named bebop, chose, for many reasons, to keep playing what they knew, rather than join the bleeding edge of the time. Swing had become a style, and the mainstreamers stayed within it. Many of them played ...
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