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The Bad Plus' Reid Anderson Interviewed for "A to Z"
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St. Louis Jazz Notes by Dean Minderman
Interview: Dick Hyman (Part 2)
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JazzWax by Marc Myers
Dick Hyman can play anything and sound like anyone. Too often this has been unfairly characterized as impersonation. As anyone who has listened carefully to Dick knows, his ability to play fluently in the style of, say, James P. Johnson or Erroll Garner isn't an attempt to pass himself off as someone he's not. Rather, Dick is merely slipping into another pianist's shoes and exploring a lost approach, reviving a technique to give it a modern airing. Dick's point always ...
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Interview: Dick Hyman (Part 1)
Source:
JazzWax by Marc Myers
Few pianists have been there and done that as often as Dick Hyman. In addition to playing with Charlie Parker, Lester Young, Tony Scott and Red Norvo, Dick studied with Teddy Wilson and recorded with Benny Goodman, Zoot Sims and virtually every other jazz great you can think of in the 1950s. In the late 1960s, Dick was among the first to record on the Moog synthesizer. In the 1970s, his Scott Joplin: Complete Works for Piano recorded in 1975 ...
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Trumpeter Joey Pero Interviewed at AAJ
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All About Jazz
The great lead and jazz trumpeter Bobby Shew tells his students that “talent is a matter of breaking barriers." While trumpeter Joey Pero might have brilliantly selected and covered “Defying Gravity" from Broadway's Wicked on his breakthrough CD, Resonance (Resonance Music Group, 2009), Pero has been defying and utterly smashing performance barriers all his life. What would you expect from a man who, still in his mother's womb no less, was given the chance to “witness" and leap in response ...
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British Pianist Gwilym Simcock Interviewed at AAJ
Source:
All About Jazz
Pianist/composer Gwilym Simcock has achieved a lot in a short time. His debut album as leader, Perception (Basho, 2007) was roundly praised as heralding the arrival of a significant new talent.
Prior to that Simcock had captured attention for lighting up Bill Bruford's Earthworks, Tim Garland's Lighthouse Trio and Malcolm Creese's Acoustic Triangle.
Awards and commissions began to roll in accompanied by a certain amount of hype; Chick Corea labeled him a “creative genius" and comparisons between the talent of ...
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New Orleans Jazz Band Gets in Step with the Times
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Michael Ricci
THE Preservation Hall Jazz Band, which in its 48 years has built a global reputation for presenting the traditional New Orleans sound, is taking a more contemporary approach these days recruiting younger players, expanding its repertoire and allowing surrealist elements to creep into its performances. But even as it modernizes its approach, the band, which comes to the Tarrytown Music Hall on Thursday, is keeping the old-time faith hiring musicians whose strong links to the pioneers of jazz assure the ...
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A Guaraldi Story
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Rifftides by Doug Ramsey
The recent reissue of music by Vince Guaraldi and subsequent Rifftides and radio ramblings led the veteran print and broadcast journalist Jack Berry to grace a new web site with an account of a piquant Guaraldi adventure. It has to do with Vince's ability to make lemonade.
When he climbed up on the bench and began his first tune, however, something ominous occurred. There was an entirely dead note on the piano. Guaraldi halted the song and looked into the ...Continue Reading
Ocote Soul Sounds Interviewed at AAJ
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All About Jazz
Ocote Soul Sound is the brainchild of two incredibly accomplished musicians, who continue to operate just under the radar; one more project to occupy the diminishingly available time of guitarist Adrian Quesada and flautist Martin Perna. With roots in the otherworldly grooves of label mates and benefactors Thievery Corporation, Ocote Soul Sounds' Coconut Rock (ESL, 2009), builds on the band's “Chicanos in Outer Space" groove by adding a cinematic quality reminiscent of David Axelrod, Weather Report and other fusion era ...
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