Interview News

Eva Cassidy: The Voice and the Silence

Source: Michael Ricci
September 18, 2009

I'm used to reading lists of the favorite musicians of young people and not knowing but - maybe - one out of every ten. As opposed to when I was twenty and could name every band in the free world, their members, their albums, who produced their albums, and what session musicians they used, now I know about ten current bands. Well, I'm fifty-seven. I'm not supposed to know this stuff. So, I've adopted a fine Irish smile and a ...

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Interview: Meredith D'Ambrosio (PT 3)

Source: JazzWax by Marc Myers
September 17, 2009

When you first speak with vocalist Meredith d'Ambrosio, you hear a shyness that comes when artists devote most of the their waking hours to their work and little time interacting with others. But Meredith is no mouse. Spend time with her and you hear a distinct take-charge sensibility, a gentle get-it-done mindset that has served her well as a jazz singer, pianist, composer, lyricist and visual artist. [Photo: Meredith playing and singing at Boston's Camelot Lounge in 1966]

During the ...

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Interview: Meredith D'Ambrosio (PT 2)

Source: JazzWax by Marc Myers
September 16, 2009

Meredith d'Ambrosio's life reads like an Edith Wharton novel. For years, the Boston vocalist struggled with a mother and father who rarely spoke to each other, leaving her somewhat unprepared to deal with an early love and then a marriage that quickly fizzled. Through it all, Meredith managed to remain focused on studying visual arts, a safe harbor of sorts from the tension and strife in her personal life. Part of the difficulty at home was that Meredith's mother had ...

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Diane Birch, a Rebellious Spirit with a Soulful Bent

Source: Michael Ricci
September 16, 2009

Soul music has become a burgeoning youth movement of sorts. The best new artist trophy at the Grammy Awards the last two years has gone to Adele and Amy Winehouse, two-younger-than-30 artists steeped in vintage sounds.

Like the aforementioned artists, Diane Birch is drawing from the decades before she was born. Titled “Bible Belt," Birch's debut pays homage to the sounds of the South -- “Photograph," for example, sways from a comfortably floral orchestration to a full-on gospel coda, and ...

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Trombonist Wycliffe Gordon Interviewed at AAJ

Source: All About Jazz
September 16, 2009

Wycliffe Gordon is one of the busiest jazz trombone players in the business today. He has traveled the world performing with the Wynton Marsalis Septet and Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, under his own name and as a duo with Jay Leonhart. As an educator he has performed and taught master classes at various schools.

AAJ Contributor Marcia Hillman spoke with Gordon about the state of education in jazz today, as well as his work with Wynton Marsalis and an exciting ...

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Interview: Meredith D'Ambrosio (PT 1)

Source: JazzWax by Marc Myers
September 15, 2009

Over the summer I received a sweet e-mail from Meredith d'Ambrosio thanking me for including her in a roundup of superb vocal versions of Bill Evans songs. You may not be familiar with the vocalist, but what's about to happen to you happened to me in the mid-1990s. Back then, a friend gave me a copy of It's Your Dance with a warning: “You're going to listen to this and feel as if you've known this singer all your life." ...

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Trumpeter Bill Dixon Interviewed at AAJ

Source: All About Jazz
September 15, 2009

Trumpeter and composer Bill Dixon is one of those rare figures in creative music who was both there as it took its initial steps and currently remains at the forefront of contemporary improvisation. In the last two years, he has directed or co-led orchestral configurations and recorded and performed with hand-picked small groups of international renown. The modern brass language and its expansion of vocal sounds into areas hitherto rarely occupied by any instrument certainly are reflected in Dixon's years ...

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Guitarist Robben Ford Interviewed at AAJ...And More!

Source: All About Jazz
September 14, 2009

Few guitarists on the scene today can boast a longer, more diverse and accomplished career than that of perennial blues-jazz great Robben Ford. Having toured and recorded as a sideman with such legendary performers as Joni Mitchell, George Harrison, Bonnie Raitt and Miles Davis, Ford has also made a name for himself as a bandleader, instrumental composer and songwriter. With the release of his 2009 album Soul on Ten, his fourth for the Concord label, the five-time Grammy nominee is ...

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