Interview News

Pianist Aaron Goldberg Interviewed at AAJ

Source: All About Jazz
August 7, 2007

Listening to Worlds (Sunnyside, 2006) makes one want to talk to the man behind the music. That's why AAJ contributor Joao Moreira dos Santos decided to meet Aaron Goldberg at the Hot Clube de Portugal, in Lisbon, determined to both find out more about this talented young pianist/composer/arranger and to hear his music live. His show drove the audience crazy, particularly aspiring young jazzmen, who reacted instantaneously to the song “Lambada de Serpente," an original ballad by Djavan that Goldberg ...

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Guitarist John Abercrombie Interviewed at AAJ

Source: All About Jazz
August 6, 2007

John Abercrombie is the most important living jazz guitarist.

That caught your attention, didn't it? Well, I'll insist it's true. No guitarist has a stronger recorded legacy than Abercrombie's. He moved to New York City in 1969 and immediately began carving out a reputation as a peerless, fearless player, doing road work with organist Johnny Hammond and recording with the Brecker Brothers' Dreams group. A stint in drummer Billy Cobham's band led to more touring and recording before Abercrombie made ...

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Saxophonist Rudresh Mahanthappa Interviewed at AAJ

Source: All About Jazz
August 2, 2007

While Bobby Jindal and Indra Nooyi are making Indian-Americans' presence felt in the corridors of political and corporate power in the US, another front seems ready to be claimed by them: the arts. And nothing represents the American arts like jazz. Despite being an international musical currency, jazz is still an unbroken American tradition and a reservoir of the American spirit.

Nothing heralds the entre of Indian-Americans into the sanctum sanctorums of the American society better than the presence of ...

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Trombonist Ryan Keberle Interviewed at AAJ

Source: All About Jazz
July 31, 2007

Trombonist Ryan Keberle's debut CD, Double Quartet (Alternative Side, 2007), displays a facile and expressive instrumentalist with a sound and technique that is smoothly intoned and gregarious with an emphasis on creating strong melodic lines. He is also a musical thinker with a rapidly maturing compositional and arranging style.

He currently performs with his own group, but stays busy in New York as a member of Maria Schneider's Orchestra and performing with the likes of Slide Hampton, Joe Lovano and ...

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Trombonist Rick Parker Interviewed at AAJ

Source: All About Jazz
July 30, 2007

All About Jazz founder/publisher Michael Ricci thought Rick Parker's second CD, Finding Space (WJF Records, 2006) was one of the best records of 2006. Parker is an energetic young musician and composer who also happens to play trombone. He's serious about writing his own music and finding his own way, even releasing his new album on a label he co-founded with Jesse Selengut, with whom he runs the Williamsburg Jazz Festival.

All About Jazz contributor Jason Crane, who also hosts ...

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American Voices Founder John Ferguson Interviewed at AAJ

Source: All About Jazz
July 24, 2007

From Afghanistan and Albania, to Venezuela and Vietnam, American Voices founder John Ferguson has brought American music, including jazz and blues, to almost every corner of the world, including 79 countries on five continents. And after traveling back and forth across the globe, what Ferguson is looking for next is simply the latest place where listeners have yet to encounter the diversity of American musical culture.

American Voices, founded in 1993, is a non-profit organization with the simple, daunting mission ...

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Pianist Anat Fort Interviewed at AAJ

Source: All About Jazz
July 23, 2007

While her discography as a leader consisted, until this year, of only one self-released album (Peel, 1999), New York-based, Israeli-born composer/pianist Anat Fort has been working steadily for years. Few contemporary jazz pianists have as graceful and developed a playing style as Fort--her use of rests, her love of space, and her classically-imbued phrasing are, once you've encountered her, immediately recognizable. She's just as good a composer, however, and it's the songs on her 2007 ECM debut A Long Story ...

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Bassist Avishai Cohen Interviewed at AAJ

Source: All About Jazz
July 20, 2007

Avishai Cohen is the sound of a new generation of bass prodigies, and his talent is a force to be reckoned with in the world of jazz. The New Yorker has affirmed him to be “one of the most gifted bassists of his generation who is finding his own voice as a composer." His vision knows no boundaries and is ever-expanding exponentially. Down Beat Magazine has identified him as “a musician who is a jazz visionary of global proportions." He ...

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