Home » Jazz News
Interview News
Timely announcements covering new album releases, tours, concert series, special events, job postings, crowdfunding campaigns and more. You can find more news by searching our website, viewing our news stream, seeing what's trending or reading our blog posts. Subscribe to our news RSS feed and/or embed AAJ news content on your website or blog. Learn about our news service here. Submit news here.
Saxphonist Jason Robinson Interviewed at All About Jazz...and More!
Source:
Braithwaite & Katz Communications
Saxophonist Jason Robinson is alert and ready to work his place in the scheme of things, from jazz itself and music at large, to the existential particulars of philosophy. A supple technician with a penchant for abstract thought, he splices together different strains of theory and logic with combinatory takes on period, school and style. A deeply ingrained reverence and sense for jazz history comes out in his carefully calibrated, often composed body of multivalent, multicolored music. Equally informed by ...
Continue Reading
Bassist Linda Oh Interviewed at All About Jazz
Source:
Fully Altered Media
In an arena that is overwhelmingly dominated by her male counterparts, bassist Linda May-Han Oh is going to be a force with which to be reckoned. Her auspicious self-produced debut, Entry (2009), was lauded by critics, and was one of pianist Vijay Iyer's top picks for 2009. Her technical know-how is solidified by visceral, emotive and gutsy performance. Oh walks softly and lets her double-bass do the boasting, and does so impressively. With the buzz slowly getting out about her ...
Continue Reading
Rudresh Mahanthappa and Bunky Green Lock Horns at the Jazz Standard
Source:
All About Jazz @ Spinner
One of the great jazz stories of 2009 and 2010 has been the partnership between alto saxophonists Rudresh Mahanthappa and Bunky Green. The career of Mahanthappa, a Guggenheim Fellow and Downbeat Rising Star, has taken off, thanks to some strong post-Coltrane style playing of his own and his association with Vijay Iyer and other new bright lights on the jazz scene. Green is a different animal altogether—now 75, the saxophonist had a brief stint with Charles Mingus and played around ...
Continue Reading
Interview: Michael Formanek
Source:
Ars Nova Workshop
Bassist and composer Michael Formanek has worked with many leading North American and European jazz musicians over the span of his 35 year career, including Stan Getz, Marty Ehrlich, Evan Parker, Dave Burrell, and several ensembles with Tim Berne. His new quartet with altoist Berne, pianist Craig Taborn and drummer Gerald Cleaver premiered at The Stone in 2008 and just released their debut record, The Rub and Spare Change, on ECM. They’ll be playing Philadelphia for the first time on ...
Continue Reading
An Unlikely Pairing? Think Again... the Rudresh and Bunky Show
Source:
The Independent Ear by Willard Jenkins
One of the most potent new recordings released this fall, and one bound to receive top ten critic's considerations at year's end, is Apex, a partnership between kindred alto saxophone spirits Rudresh Mahanthappa and Bunky Green on the PI Recordings label. In addition to the cross-generational pairing of these two penetratingly original alto saxophonists, they are joined by a robust cast of fellow travelers that includes Jason Moran on piano, Francois Moutin on piano, and drummers Jack DeJohnette and Damion ...
Continue Reading
Frank O'Hara on Billie Holiday
Source:
JazzWax by Marc Myers
If you're unfamiliar with Frank O'Hara, you're in for a treat. O'Hara was part of the New York School of poetry that emerged in the 1950s. What made this school singular is how its poets used words. Rather than stick rigidly to traditional form and meter, they expressed themselves freely and often journalistically. They also prized how words sounded smashed together and adored the feeling of abstraction. What's more, the school's poets came together informally with painters, dancers, jazz musicians ...
Continue Reading
Running Down Miles' Voodoo
Source:
JamBase
By Ron Hart 2010 marks the 40th anniversary of the release of Bitches Brew, an album long considered to be one of the pivotal turning points in the history of jazz. Change was indeed in the air when Miles Davis initially incorporated electronic elements into 1968's Miles in the Sky and 1969's Filles De Kilimanjaro. However, when he created an album with an all-electric ensemble with In A Silent Way (also released in '69), it was met with a staggering ...
Continue Reading
Interview: Louis Hayes (Part 3)
Source:
JazzWax by Marc Myers
In 1960, when drummer Philly Joe Jones was asked by jazz writer and critic Ralph J. Gleason for the name of his favorite drummer, Jones answered “Louis Hayes." Just 21 years old at the time, Louis had just ended a three-year stay with the Horace Silver Quintet to join the Cannonball Adderley Quintet. The parting was amicable, and the reason for the change, Silver said in his autobiography, was money. Silver paid all of his sidemen the same amount, and ...
Continue Reading
