Interview News

Craig Brenner & the Crawdads "Live to Love" Reviewed by George Fish

Source: Michael Ricci
April 13, 2010

Bloomington, Indiana's Craig Brenner & the Crawdads have a new CD, “Live to Love," that not only romps with boogie and blues, but also with jazz, R&B and even country in a delightful potpourri of ten original songs. Craig Brenner, leader of the group and composer, lyricist and arranger of all ten original numbers on the CD, is an exemplar of what can happen when formal musical training meets deep-inside soulfulness and creativity. Brenner graduated from Florida Southern College in ...

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Jamie Cullum and All That Jazz

Source: Michael Ricci
April 13, 2010

SINGAPORE: UK singer Jamie Cullum has released five critically acclaimed albums so far and was even nominated for Best Original Song for his work on Hollywood legend Clint Eastwood's 2009 film “Grand Torino". That would be the boring way to describe Cullum (though it is all true). But who is the man behind the music? Cullum is best described by the word 'spontaneous'. The 31-year-old just goes with the flow when it comes to picking which song he would cover ...

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Veteran Saxophonist Ralph Lalama Interviewed at AAJ

Source: All About Jazz
April 13, 2010

Ralph Lalama's rich tenor saxophone voice has been heard for years on the New York City scene, perhaps most notably with the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra and its predecessors, first led by Thad Jones and Mel Lewis, and later by just Lewis. He's a guy who grew up when rock music was fully bursting on the American scene, but maintains that not much of that music touched him. He came from a family that listened to jazz and the American Popular ...

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Interview: Nancy Wilson (Part 1)

Source: JazzWax by Marc Myers
April 13, 2010

Nancy Wilson is the last great female song stylist of the 1950s and the first American female pop-soul singer of the 1960s. Though she began by performing locally in her hometown in the 1950s, her Capitol career started at the tail end of 1959, just as one era was ending and another was beginning. Throughout the 1960s, Nancy was known for brassy updates of jazz standards and hip pop soul and rock renditions. And yet today, she hasn't been properly ...

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The Melodic Joe LaBarbera

Source: Rifftides by Doug Ramsey
April 12, 2010

In conversation with a casual listener who said he wanted to know more about jazz, I mentioned that the creation of melody in improvisation is not limited to what are generally considered melody instruments. I said that some drummers play melodic, even lyrical, solos. “What do you mean?" he said, clearly puzzled. I tried, rather clumsily, I'm afraid, to explain that through combinations of phrasing, dynamics and tone control, a drummer who is so inclined (not all are) can create ...

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Trumpeter Jeremy Pelt Interviewed at AAJ

Source: All About Jazz
April 12, 2010

For the younger generation of jazz musicians, those in their thirties today, the path is not always as smooth and easy as we may think it is. Nobody likes to live in anybody's shadow. Jazz is populated with giants who left their mark and those who look up to them in order to be able to move on.

Just like Nicholas Payton before him--who had to hear the endless comparisons jazz critics and fans kept throwing at him with Louis ...

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Celebrating Sharkey Bonano

Source: Rifftides by Doug Ramsey
April 10, 2010

Sharkey Bonano was born on this day 98 years ago. He died in 1972. During my first residency in New Orleans, I was fortunate that Sharkey was still around and working. Late in his career, when Bonano was able to resist his cornball urges, he was capable of superb trumpet playing of the kind he did in the 1920s and '30s with Gene Goldkette, Ben Pollack and his own Sharks of Rhythm. In this photograph from 1968 or so, he ...

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Randy Weston's 84th

Source: The Independent Ear by Willard Jenkins
April 9, 2010

Last Tuesday, April 6, NEA Jazz Master Randy Weston celebrated his 84th birthday in royal fashion.  The setting was The Jazz Standard, New Yorks finest jazz club/eatery (check George Weins latest blog entry and you'll understand that tag).  Tuesday was opening night of Randy Westons African Rhythms weeklong Jazz Standard engagement, and more importantly the master pianist-composers 84th birthday.  For the occasion his longtime music director-saxophonist T.K. Blue and agent Maurice Montoya had arranged a superb evening featuring the members of ...

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