Interview News

Drummer Lenny White Interviewed at AAJ

Source: All About Jazz
August 11, 2008

Miles Davis kicked the fusion door open in 1969 and some people still haven't gotten over it. Among the future jazz star innovators on Bitches Brew (Columbia/Legacy, 1969) was an unknown eighteen year-old Tony Williams fanatic named Lenny White, who found his recording debut making history. Now an elder statesman at almost sixty, White maintains a furiously fast level of invention tied to an appropriately superhuman technique. Despite recently recovering from shoulder surgery, White packs a punch enviable in a ...

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Marty Ashby Labeled Jazz Genius

Source: All About Jazz
August 10, 2008

Marty Ashby's career constantly twists and turns, but he never gets lost. “Like music, your work doesn't always go from A to B," says the executive producer at the Manchester Craftsmen's Guild in the North Side. “It doesn't always go in a straight line." Straight lines seem nonexistent in the work of this jazz musician and organizer who has, in 22 years, established the Craftsmen's Guild as the dominant jazz-presenting force in Pittsburgh and led to the capture of four ...

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Janis Ian Society's Child Interview

Source: All About Jazz
August 7, 2008

A talk with the singer-songwriter and author of a new memoir, Society's Child.

Janis Ian's initiation into rock 'n' roll was early and dramatic. In 1966, at the age of 15, she recorded Society's Child, a song she'd written about an interracial romance. It raced up the charts and caused an immediate firestorm. Ian soon became pals with some of the era's greatest musical stars, including Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix. While she was fortunate not to meet their fates ...

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Jason Adasiewicz Interviewed on Chicago Public Radio

Source: Improvised Communications
August 6, 2008

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Singer/Songwriter Rigmor Gustafsson Interviewed at AAJ

Source: All About Jazz
August 5, 2008

Singer/songwriter Rigmor Gustafsson is perhaps best known for her vocal interpretations of other great singers, including Dionne Warwick and Burt Bacharach. Gustafsson's unique songwriting style has, however, garnered her accolades and top-ranking hits; she is the recipient of gold records in both Germany and Sweden. With Alone With You (ACT, 2008), Gustafsson showcases her amalgamated sound of jazz and pop. As the title hints at, the album focuses on the audience and the listener becomes her guiding light. The inspiration ...

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Reedman James Carter Interviewed at AAJ

Source: All About Jazz
August 4, 2008

Multi-instrumentalist James Carter has always had eclectic tastes. That was evident on his debut, JC on the Set (Columbia, 1994), where the squeaks and blips linked him to the avant camp of Eric Dolphy and the tenor swoons nestled him comfortably within the traditional velvet of Coleman Hawkins and Ben Webster.

Subsequent releases found him venturing further along each of those paths individually, splitting the new and the traditional. Soon entire James Carter projects were devoted to exploring the work ...

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Lennon Interview Turned Animated

Source: Michael Ricci
July 29, 2008

I Met the Walrus

In 1969, 14-year-old Jerry Levitan sneaked into John Lennon's hotel room with a reel-to-reel tape recorder, and the idiosyncratic music titan was gracious enough to agree to a short interview.

This film, I Met the Walrus, is the audio of that interview set stunningly to animation by Josh Raskin. The film was nominated for an Academy Award last year and is now being featured at YouTube's Screening Room section, where it has garnered 650,000 views. ...

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Pianist Taylor Eigsti Interviewed at AAJ

Source: All About Jazz
July 22, 2008

Pianist Taylor Eigsti was last interviewed at AAJ in 2004, along with his mother, Nancy, about what it was like to be (and to raise) a prodigy. In the four years since then, Taylor's career has continued its nearly-vertical trajectory, with two Grammy nominations, two prestigious Piano Jazz shows with Marian McPartland, three jazz magazine covers, and multiple Down Beat Magazine critics' poll recognition.

Now 23, Eigsti continues to carve his place in the jazz tradition while being very much ...

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