Interview News

Is Avant-Jazz Pianist Matthew Shipp His Own Worst Enemy?

Source: All About Jazz @ Spinner
January 8, 2010

By Tad Hendrickson Matthew Shipp has a great new solo album coming out, but it's his mouth that once again causes a stir. There's been a rumble in the jazz jungle these last few weeks as a new Jazztimes article on the experimental pianist makes the rounds. There has been a number of posts here at All About Jazz with a lot of back-and-forth about comments Shipp made, some new and some published previously. According to Shipp, both Wayne Shorter's ...

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Interview: Dick Hyman (Part 3)

Source: JazzWax by Marc Myers
January 7, 2010

Pianist Dick Hyman is as precise with his words as he is with his notes. During our conversation, Dick often stopped mid-sentence momentarily when answering a question, as if rolling his choice of words around in his palm before selecting them. His pauses weren't abrupt or disconcerting. They were lyrical, like his playing, coming almost like quarter-note rests in a swinging measure of music. What's even more interesting about these pauses is that there were no “uhhhs" or other unconscious ...

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The Bad Plus' Reid Anderson Interviewed for "A to Z"

Source: St. Louis Jazz Notes by Dean Minderman
January 7, 2010

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Interview: Dick Hyman (Part 2)

Source: JazzWax by Marc Myers
January 6, 2010

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
January 6, 2010

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

Source: All About Jazz
January 6, 2010

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
January 4, 2010

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

Source: Michael Ricci
January 3, 2010

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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