Accent

Accent: Christmas All the Way

by Nicholas F. Mondello
November 26, 2019

A rhetorical question: what makes a great Christmas album? We know all or most of the chestnuts, both commercial and religious. The Drummer Boy flams, someone's dreaming white, and another will be home in their dreams. The annual marathon Yuletide programs rely heavily on the tried and true with an occasional novelty thrown in. Classical purists hit up the legit pantheon. With this album, a capella vocal group, Accent adds a Who's Who of world-class arrangers (Jorge Calandrelli, Nan Schwartz, ...

Accent: In This Together

by Nicholas F. Mondello
February 28, 2018

The a capella and instrument-accompanied jazz vocal ensemble format has a robust presence in the genre's history. Vocal groups such as The Four Freshmen, The Hi-Los, The Swingle Singers, Manhattan Transfer, Take 6, and the L.A. and New York Voices and others all added wonderful material to the canon (and also significantly influenced Pop genre groups such as The Beach Boys and many others). Accent is a six-member, all-male a capella vocal group. It is comprised of ...

With a Catalan Accent

Source: Michael Ricci
January 14, 2010

By Larry Blumenfeld for The Wall Street Journal When Chano Dominguez was a boy in Cadiz, Spain, he played the flamenco music his father loved on guitar. At the Jazz Standard in Manhattan in December, he reached briefly into the guts of his piano, damping its strings to make his notes sound as though plucked. He was performing “Freddie Freeloader," a Miles Davis tune, but save for Mario Rossy's acoustic bass, the stage evoked the flamenco of his native city ...
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Cosmopolitan Jazz with a Literary Accent

Source: Michael Ricci
June 6, 2009

Stacey Kent, fresh from a tour of 27 countries, was in an exultant mood on Thursday evening at Birdland. Her latest album, Breakfast on the Morning Tram (Blue Note/EMI), has enjoyed the kind of commercial success in Europe that Diana Krall’s records achieve in the United States; it also earned her a Grammy nomination for best jazz vocal album. In March she received the National Order of Arts and Letters decoration from the French culture minister.

But more significant, Breakfast, ...
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Bassist Ingebrigt Haker Flaten Experimental Jazz with a Norwegian Accent

Source: Michael Ricci
April 13, 2009

Avant-garde jazz has almost always had its sacramental side. Theres a reason for the devotion that some listeners bring to the mid-1960s music of John Coltrane.

Or to the output of his fellow saxophonist Albert Ayler. The spirituality in these performances wasn't subtext or suggestion; it radiated out from a fervent core.

Ingebrigt Haker Flaten, an astute Norwegian bassist, has experience with the fiery side of free improvisation: hes among the most prolific figures on the European experimental scene. His ...
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Devotional and Experimental Jazz with a Norwegian Accent

Source: Michael Ricci
April 13, 2009

Avant-garde jazz has almost always had its sacramental side. There’s a reason for the devotion that some listeners bring to the mid-1960s music of John Coltrane, or to the output of his fellow saxophonist Albert Ayler. The spirituality in these performances wasn’t subtext or suggestion; it radiated out from a fervent core. Ingebrigt Haker Flaten, an astute Norwegian bassist, has experience with the fiery side of free improvisation: he’s among the most prolific figures on the European experimental scene. His ...
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Paquito D'Rivera Hamming It up with a Cuban Accent

Source: Michael Ricci
January 5, 2009

The Cuban saxophonist, clarinetist and composer Paquito DRivera, now 60, came to the United States in 1981. Cuban music is the core of his repertory, but he has never, before now, led a Cuban band in this country.

Paquito DRivera played a run of shows with his new band. That may seem strange, except that hes been busy with broader ideas. Or maybe just one big idea: Afro-Latin music in the New World. His bands have included besides ...
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R&R Hall of Fame a Piece of Cleveland with a New York Accent

Source: Michael Ricci
November 21, 2008

A Temple of Rock Culture The Clash looked down from a wall-size 1978 photograph at a roomful of workmen sawing, measuring, painting and lugging. Vintage amplifiers were wheeled in from the chill outside, passing by plexiglass exhibition cases, Bruce Springsteen’s tarp- covered 1957 Chevrolet and a 26-foot scale model of Manhattan. Then came the heads-up.

“Here comes the phone booth,” somebody said, and in rolled the wooden phone box from CBGB, plastered with decades-old stickers like a punk ...
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Bluegrass Music with a Chinese Accent

Source: All About Jazz
July 13, 2008

Bluegrass With A Red Tint Abigail Washburn's sound is a mash-up of old-timey Americana and Chinese tradition.

Abigail Washburn is sitting on a bench in New York's Battery Park City on a recent afternoon, the Statue of Liberty standing at attention just beyond the water's edge. Tourists stop to snap photos, buy trinkets, get panhandled. Washburn is herself a fellow traveler: her touring band, the Sparrow Quartet, will play a set of free old-timey music in about an ...
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Haunting Soundtracks: Jazz with a Polish Accent

Source: Michael Ricci
May 22, 2008

The Polish trumpeter Tomasz Stanko's records of the last six years, with their elegiac moods and clean, controlled lyricism, have become a primary reference point for current European jazz. So it was curious to see him taking a step back into a woollier past on Monday in a performance at the Museum of Modern Art, part of the museum's Jazz Score series on jazz and film. The tenor saxophonist Billy Harper sat in with Mr. Stanko's regular working quartet -- ...
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