Performance / Tour News

Making the Cello Jazzy: Its All in the Pizzicato Pluck

Source: Michael Ricci
March 30, 2009

The cellist Erik Friedlander possesses a deep, singing tone on his instrument, and when he gives into it completely, he can be a heartbreaker.

At the diminutive Brooklyn club Barbs, which he regards as a second home, his sound approaches room-size resonance, with little or no amplification, just about anytime he draws a bow across the strings.

But that was a rare and judicious indulgence in his hourlong set there on Friday night. Instead, as he does on Broken Arm ...

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Idan Raichel Project Israeli Keyboardist at the Orpheum Theatre

Source: Michael Ricci
March 30, 2009

The Israeli keyboardist-composer blends rhythms and sounds from around the globe into a zesty world music stir fry.

An Ethiopian Jew by birth, Israeli keyboardist-composer Idan Raichel is a man with a mission: bringing to the Tel Aviv scene a younger generation's music that blends a bold variety of Middle Eastern, African, Indian, Latin American and funky hip-hop styles and that trumpets a message of conciliation and peace across the Arab-Israeli gulf.

The dreadlocked Raichel brought his Idan Raichel Project ...

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Elton John and Billy Joel in Concert

Source: Michael Ricci
March 30, 2009

Saturday night's alright for the piano men, who gave fans a three- hour show full of hits.

Partnerships between pop superstars usually deliver less than the sum of their talents. Nostalgia isn't always enough, but a surprising collaboration between Elton John and Billy Joel, who play nothing more than their best-known hits from the '70s and '80s, has been going strong since 1995.

That was enough to land the singer-pianists in front of a full house at the Honda Center ...

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David Halliday Band Featuring Angela Bingham at Jeanne Wagner Theatre in Salt Lake City

Source: All About Jazz
March 30, 2009

David Halliday is known as one of the finest saxophonists in the Mountain West and has performed in virtually every venue the area has to offer.

Halliday makes his long overdue headlining concert debut at the Jeanne Wagner Theatre on May 2 at 7:30pm with a quartet comprised of Utah's finest jazz musicians: Dan Waldis on piano, Evan Coombs on bass, and Steve Lyman on drums.

Joining David's Quartet will be David's longtime friend, Salt Lake City favorite - now ...

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Billy Bang and Yusef Komunyakaa at Harlem Stage

Source: Kim Smith Public Relations
March 30, 2009

The Harlem Stage Gatehouse is the intimate setting for this emotionally charged work that combines the exceptional talents of Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Yusef Komunyakaa with the cutting edge sounds of jazz violinist Billy Bang. Coming from seemingly disparate backgrounds — Komunyakaa raised in Louisiana; Billy Bang reared in the Bronx — the two share a common past as Vietnam veterans. In this compelling production, the artists use music, voice, media, and conversation to capture their remembered experience of a cruel ...

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Dave Allen Quartet - April 2nd at Tea Lounge, NYC

Source: All About Jazz
March 30, 2009

Dave Allen Quartet plays the Tea Lounge April 2nd

With Noah Preminger - sax Dave Ambrosio - bass Dan Weiss - drums

THE TEA LOUNGE 837 Union St, Brooklyn $5 suggested

Allen has a fully developed and mature approach to composition, technical command of his instrument, and the inspirational fortitude to pull wonderful music from the ensemble. Each piece is like an aural painting or film in the way it slides across ...

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Is West Side Story Overrated?

Source: All About Jazz
March 30, 2009

The new Broadway revival of West Side Story, opening on Thursday at the Palace Theater in New York.

One of the perks of being a theater critic, in those dog days of the season when you find yourself struggling to sit through the latest Chekhov revival or pretentious little comedy about tightly wound New York singles, is the Broadway-musical revival. Yes, you can complain as I often have about unimaginative commercial producers who keep recycling surefire classics like Gypsy or ...

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Chick Corea/ John McLaughlin and the Five Peace Band

Source: All About Jazz
March 29, 2009

REVIEW Back in the era when Chick Corea and John McLaughlin pushed jazz-rock to its virtuosic limits, the musicians assembled before a packed Royce Hall Thursday night would have been called a “supergroup."

Even the name Five Peace Band evokes that time, when “peace, love and understanding" was a deeply felt rallying cry, not a marketing slogan. But unlike many a supergroup, this well-rehearsed -- but not too tight -- collective is the real McCoy. Its precise, often ...

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