Interview News

Lennie Niehaus Said It

Source: JazzWax by Marc Myers
April 24, 2010

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Sharon Jones from Jameson to Fela Kuti, Preshow Rites of a Soul Band

Source: Michael Ricci
April 26, 2010

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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Duke Pearson's Big Band: 1967

Source: JazzWax by Marc Myers
April 26, 2010

The story of jazz is filled with behind-the-scenes guys who contributed mightily to the music but are little known today. One of these invisible hands was Duke Pearson. In addition to being a fine composer, hard bop pianist and Blue Note record producer, Pearson briefly led a compelling big band in the late 1960s. Top musicians like Lew Tabackin, Frank Foster, Pepper Adams, Benny Powell, Burt Collins, Bob Cranshaw and others were only too happy to be part of Pearson's ...

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Pianist Neil Cowley Interviewed at AAJ...And More!

Source: All About Jazz
April 26, 2010

It's not an observation based on hard evidence, but the jazz world seems to be more awash with piano trios than it has been for many years. Whether it's a whim of fashion, a response to economic recession, a reaction to the over-digitization of music technology, or something else entirely, is far from clear. But there do seem to be a lot of them about, and many of them are extremely good.

So how does a piano trio ensure that ...

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Keyboardist Don Preston Interviewed About the Don and Bunk Show at AAJ

Source: All About Jazz
April 22, 2010

Just a few miles east of the Whisky a Go Go, where they stunned the world over 40 years ago with the classic Mothers of Invention, keyboardist Don Preston and saxophonist Bunk Gardner returned to Sunset Blvd. as The Don and Bunk Show, reviving their duo homage to the early music of Frank Zappa. Dolores Peterson Productions brought the terrible two to the Hollywood Studio Bar and Grill to warm up for their east coast tour, which may jump the ...

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Wilco Guitarist Nels Cline Reconnects with His Jazz Side on New Album

Source: All About Jazz @ Spinner
April 21, 2010

By Tad Hendrickson

Nels Cline was been straddling the line between jazz and rock guitar since the late '70s. He got his start working with jazz musicians of the likes of Julius Hemphill, Charlie Haden and Tim Berne, while also doing more rock-oriented stuff with Mike Watt, the Geraldine Fibbers and others, though his major claim to fame these days is his gig as lead guitarist for Wilco. While that band is seemingly on a never-ending tour, Cline has found ...

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Trumpeter Greg Kelley Interviewed at AAJ

Source: All About Jazz
April 21, 2010

Boston trumpeter Greg Kelley takes an atom and constructs a world out of it. Taking his cue from the metallic tubes of his instrument and how they are connected to his mouth, and ultimately his body, his sounds are never wholly disembodied but rather maintain the precise quality of that apparatus that, in his hands, is a physical/technological continuum.

Or something--efforts to characterize his art are bound to fail, turning back on themselves with the fatal realization that the only ...

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Robert Hunter Q&A on Collaboration with Jim Lauderdale

Source: JamBase
April 20, 2010

TWO OF THE FINEST SONGWRITERS ALIVE WEAVE MUSIC TOGETHER

Jim Lauderdale Two-time Grammy Award winner, singer, songwriter and Americana music icon Jim Lauderdale will release his new album Patchwork River on May 11 through Thirty Tigers. He co-wrote the album with longtime Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter, whom Lauderdale has praised as “one of the greatest writers that has ever lived in my book. He says things in songs that have never been said before. He paints pictures that have ...

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