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A Jazz Pianist Who Has Honed His Style While Hiding in Plain Sight
Source:
Michael Ricci
Sam Yahel played his own song “Truth and Beauty" around the middle of his early set on Tuesday night at the Village Vanguard. In the past hes recorded it on Hammond organ, in a different group, with saxophone and drums. Here he was playing it on the piano, with the bassist Matt Penman and the drummer Jochen Rckert, and it had a different personality: first more tense, with its crowded contrapuntal opening, then more permissive and abstract. Lots of space ...
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Interview: Nancy Wilson (Part 4)
Source:
JazzWax by Marc Myers
As Nancy Wilson's visibility and popularity grew in the early 1960s, so did her workload. In the days before scandals were built into marketing plans and stadium concerts provided artists with instant mass exposure, pop singers had to work tirelessly in hotel supper clubs and recording studios. They also hoped their singles would win AM-radio airplay and that they would be invited on nationally broadcast TV specials. This is how Nancy sang her way into the hearts of millions, becoming ...
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Interview: Nancy Wilson (Part 3)
Source:
JazzWax by Marc Myers
No other jazz-pop singer is as fluent in post-War American music as Nancy Wilson. She has always understood that a Tin Pan Alley standard requires a different approach and attitude than a jazz standard and that Broadway showstoppers have a different sound than a pop, rock or soul hit. Remarkably, Nancy approaches each genre with a completely different feel and interpretation. And if we're being completely honest, Nancy is the only classic pop singer who can deliver 60s hits (pop, ...
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Mulatu Astatke: The Man and His Influence
Source:
Giant Step
Mulatu Astatke is a musical titan, in the same league as the likes of Fela Kuti and King Sunny Ade, yet he was first recognized to most people when The Paris-based world music record label, Buda Musique devoted the entire 4th installment of their respected series, Ethiopiques, to his compositions in 1998.
Astatke was born in 1943 in a town called Jimma in Ethiopia. His family sent him abroad to Wales to study chemical engineering, and instead, he came home ...
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Jazz Vocalist Jose James Talks Inspiration, Flying Lotus, and Tonight's Zanzibar Gig
Source:
Michael Ricci
With the genre perennially accused of atrophy, it's little surprise that precocious vocalist and “Jazz Times" darling Jose James has been hailed as a so-called “savior of jazz." But the hype surrounding the Minneapolis-bred and Brooklyn-based crooner is well deserved, with his smoky, golden-throated grooves among the most dynamic to emerge from the tradition in recent memory. Boasting the support of hugely influential British DJ Gilles Peterson, plus beats from Los Angeles producer wunderkind Flying Lotus, James' latest album, “Black ...
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AACM Pianist Steve Colson Interviewed at All About Jazz
Source:
All About Jazz
As well as being a great music educator, Steve Colson is one of the most versatile jazz pianists of the last forty years, with a grasp of idioms ranging from swing to free, and from European romanticism to new music. What's more, he is a master of compression, incorporating these sources into solos and compositions with the balance of a fine blended coffee.
Colson has never been one to trumpet his own achievements, nor is he given to self-promotion. From ...
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The Mysteries of Jack Teagarden
Source:
Jazz Lives by Michael Steinman
Although he would have been astonished if you had told him he was in any way mysterious, Jack Teagarden is difficult to unravel. For one thing, Jack (or Big Tea or Mr. T.) was regarded as perhaps the finest trombonist of his time by musicians in and out of jazz: how about counting as your fans and colleagues Coleman Hawkins, Bing Crosby, Johnny Mercer, and Louis Armstrong?
If you go by the rules or the expectations that lead people to ...
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Interview: Nancy Wilson (Part 2)
Source:
JazzWax by Marc Myers
Nancy Wilson's eyes and eyebrows are a big part of her act. From a young age, Nancy intuitively knew how to use them to dramatic effect, allowing her to put more meaning behind a song's lyrics than the original lyricist probably intended. In a single song, Nancy's eyes convey confidence, innocence, vulnerability and passion. But just as you become seduced by those tender expressions and arched brows, Nancy tilts her head back and unleashes notes like fireballs, hurled with enormous ...
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