Jazz Articles about Xavier Breaker

About Xavier Breaker

Album Review

Doug Lawrence: Doug Lawrence & Friends

Read "Doug Lawrence & Friends" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
December 11, 2021

If the name Doug Lawrence doesn't sound familiar, the name Count Basie surely should. What is the Lawrence- Basie connection? Well, for more than two decades Lawrence has been the featured tenor saxophone soloist with the renowned and still- active Count Basie Orchestra, a chair once impressively occupied by the likes of Lester Young, Eddie Lockjaw" Davis, Lucky Thompson, Wardell Gray and Frank Foster, among others. When someone has been around as long as Lawrence, he or she makes a ...

Album Review

Carlos Vega: Art of the Messenger

Read "Art of the Messenger" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
May 30, 2021

Tenor saxophonist Carlos Vega is a steeped-in-the-tradition fan of early bebop, displaying his passion for the genre with his nods to alto saxophonist Charlie Parker on Bird's Ticket (2016) and Bird's Up (2017), both on Origin Records. With Art Of The Messenger he shifts his focus to Art Blakey, the drummer who led the Jazz Messengers from 1955 onward for thirty-five years, helping define—in the early years—the hard bop Blue Note Records approach to jazz. Vega and his ...

Album Review

Carlos Vega: Art of the Messenger

Read "Art of the Messenger" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
May 28, 2021

In case you didn't quite catch the “message" subtly embedded in the title of Chicago-based tenor saxophonist Carlos Vega's new recording, Art of the Messenger, here is a brief reminder that it was drummer Art Blakey who formed the Jazz Messengers in the mid-1950s and led the celebrated hard-bop ensemble until his death in 1990. The Messengers' roster of alumni reads like a Who's Who of Jazz Hall of Fame members. With that in mind, Vega assembled ...