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Drummer Paul F. Murphy Interviewed at AAJ
Source:
All About Jazz
Legendary drummer Paul F. Murphy has been involved with the high end of improvised music since the mid-1970s in San Francisco. He is most closely associated with the avant-garde of the '70s, '80s and '90s as a 12-year member of alto saxophonist Jimmy Lyons' band and a leader of several of his own groups, including Trio Hurricane. Currently, he is working with pianist Larry Willis, performing and recording groundbreaking pieces of complete improvisation, including the duo's August release, Foundations (Murphy ...
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At 30, Princeton Record Exchange is Still Groovy
Source:
Michael Ricci
By Scott Morgan It is Wednesday, in the middle of a day in the middle of an unremarkable week, and there are at least 40 people flipping through records or reading the spines of CDs along the walls of the Princeton Record Exchange. The store will draw nearly 800 people before closing this night and this is just on an otherwise unremarkable, non-shopping-season weekday. On a normal Saturday there might be 1,500 customers wending their way through 4,300 square feet ...
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Interview: Herb Geller (Part 2)
Source:
JazzWax by Marc Myers
From his earliest small-group recording session with trumpeter Tony Fruscella in February 1952, Herb Geller's sound on the alto saxophone was distinct and vibrant. There was enormous power, spidery speed, seamless ideas and a soaring tone that immediately commanded attention. Though he would be thought of as a West Coast musician in the years to follow, Herb's approach and vibrancy actually was forged in New York.
Herb's move East in 1949 changed him as an artist, giving him greater confidence ...Continue Reading
Interview: Herb Geller (Part 1)
Source:
JazzWax by Marc Myers
Herb Geller is something of a mystery to many jazz fans. For one, the alto saxophonist who recorded steadily on the West Coast in the 1950s has lived in Germany since 1962, returning to the U.S. only sporadically to perform. For another, Herb rarely grants interviews, preferring to maintain his privacy while teaching and touring in Europe.
Herb--like his West Coast alto saxophone contemporaries Art Pepper, Bud Shank, Lennie Niehaus and Charlie Mariano--seemed to live in Hollywood's recording studios in ...Continue Reading
Multi-Reedist Steve Norton Interviewed at AAJ
Source:
All About Jazz
Multi-reedist Steve Norton is best known for his work with the 1990s Boston-based band Debris. Debris was an ambitious, exuberant, puzzling band that puzzled together serialism, free jazz and funk. Their music is in equal measure exhilarating and exhausting.
It was the combination, in part, that burned Norton out about ten years ago, as well as a need to attend to his job and family. Back in full force now, at fighting weight, with drive and direction and reinvigorated sound, ...
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A Tokyo Start, but Most at Home on 125th Street
Source:
Michael Ricci
Tommy Tomita walked past the red awning, down three concrete stairs, opened a gray door covered in duct tape and entered the jazz dive. Closely followed by five Japanese tourists, Mr. Tomita marched through the narrow passageway and sat at the head of two tables next to the bandstand. His entourage sat, too. The tables, at St. Nick's Jazz Pub in Harlem's Sugar Hill, were reserved for him, as they have been on Friday evenings for about three years. Likely ...
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Sharon Jones from Jameson to Fela Kuti, Preshow Rites of a Soul Band
Source:
Michael Ricci
SHARON JONES is, as the saying goes, the real deal. A 5-foot-1 vocal powerhouse who has been nicknamed the Queen of Funk, Ms. Jones, 53, grew up singing at home in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, in church and in local bands.
But professional success in music eluded her; for a time she worked as a prison guard at Rikers Island, where the inmates would sometimes make requests. Now, as the leader of the Dap-Kings, the house band of the Brooklyn record label ...
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