Interview News

Songwriter/Guitarist Leni Stern Interviewed at AAJ

Source: All About Jazz
December 19, 2007

Songwriter and guitarist Leni Stern's Africa (LSR, 2007) marks a significant new chapter in a career marked by bold changes. Her fearlessness as an independent traveler, and her endless curiosity about the workings of the world which surrounds her, are reflected in her music. Her lyrics are tender, poetic and, above all, truthful.

As a singer, she has variously been described as a combination of Marlene Dietrich with the phrasing of Billie Holiday, and as a cross between Joni Mitchell ...

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Pianist Lucian Ban Interviewed at AAJ

Source: All About Jazz
December 18, 2007

One of the most creative new musicians on the New York City scene, Lucian Ban is a Transylvanian pianist and composer whose collaborations with fellow NYC jazzers continue to produce a burgeoning collection of original music. Recordings with Bob Stewart, Alex Harding, and Jorge Sylvester highlight Lucian's prodigious recent output, a body of work that includes five releases in the last five years.

After studying composition at the Bucharest Music Academy from 1992 to 1995, Ban formed his first stable ...

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Bassist Chris Tarry Interviewed at AAJ

Source: All About Jazz
December 17, 2007

Why would a very successful musician throw his career away to become just another bass player in New York City?

Chris Tarry didn't exactly throw his career away. But the Calgary-born, Vancouver-based Tarry was certainly one of the most celebrated bassists in Canada. As a solo artist and one-fourth of the fusion super group Metalwood, Tarry was a serious presence on the Canadian jazz scene and a winner of two Juno Awards.

And when Tarry moved to New York in ...

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Saxophonist Charles McPherson Interviewed at AAJ

Source: All About Jazz
December 12, 2007

Having started his professional career at the age of nineteen, alto saxophonist Charles McPherson found himself working with Charles Mingus from 1960 to 1972, while also recording for the Prestige label under his own name.

Always inspired by Charlie Parker, but far more than just an acolyte, he has kept the bop fires blazing with his own distinctive sound and a body of work which is as impressive as it is enjoyable.

McPherson took time during his Fall 2007 tour ...

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AMM Percussionist/Co-Founder Eddie Prevost Interviewed at AAJ

Source: All About Jazz
December 11, 2007

Drummer and percussionist Eddie Prvost has spent a career devoted to the outer reaches of the music. In the forty-odd years he's been musically active he has been a key member of the free improvisation group AMM as well as a band leader in his own right, leading units dedicated to mining a musical seam closer to free jazz than free improvisation as such.

For part of that time he has also run Matchless Recording & Publishing, a company perhaps ...

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Guitarist John Scofield Interviewed at AAJ

Source: All About Jazz
December 10, 2007

Guitarist John Scofield is an unassuming chap, seemingly at ease with himself and most things around him. He's ever congenial. Clever and well-grounded. Catch him wearing spectacles, and his look is professorial.

But don't, for a minute, think Scofield isn't serious about music. The status he's achieved in the music world was accomplished with hard work, listening to the people and sounds around him, absorbing many influences, then putting it forth--through his instrument and through composition--in a way that is ...

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Composer/Arranger/Bandleader Maria Schneider Interviewed at AAJ

Source: All About Jazz
December 6, 2007

Maria Schneider, one of the most innovative big band composer/arrangers of the past two decades, is on a roll. In an era of declining record sales and rising recording costs, she is flying high. Sky Blue (2007), her second release through ArtistShare, has garnered considerable accolades; largely fan-funded, the album is not only an artistic triumph but a product and paragon of the new jazz business model.

In a recent conversation with AAJ contributor Tom Greenland, Schneider shared her thoughts ...

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Cynthia Basinet: Ten Years of Being Santa's Baby - The Concordia Interview

Source: All About Jazz
December 5, 2007

Montreal - “If you're doing it right, it's more than a cover. It's going to be reinvented," says Cynthia Basinet about the art of a cover song and her Christmas classic.

By Marc Soucy

Humanitarian, singer, actress, activist, model and mother, Cynthia Basinet is running for office this Christmas. Not really, but she sure could. For now she celebrates the 10th anniversary of her hit single “Santa Baby".

The Christmas classic, originally sung by Eartha Kitt in 1953, has been ...

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