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Interview

Under Your Skin Interviews Lauren Sevian (video)

Source: underyourskin
March 31, 2012

Lauren Sevian's “LSQ" is a dynamic baritone saxophone driven jazz experience that features original hard bop tinged compositions and improvisation. The LSQ has performed in some of the top NYC jazz clubs including Smoke, Kitano, Jazz Gallery, and Fat Cat. Each member is a rising star on the jazz scene, and has performed with numerous jazz artists/groups ranging from the Grammy award winning Mingus Big Band to Wayne Shorter. The LSQ has an important message to spread, the language of ...

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Interview

Jazz Face: Hiromi, Virtuosity in Service to Art

Source: JazzINK by Andrea Canter
March 30, 2012

So what's so bad about being so good? Ever since she burst onto the jazz scene nearly a decade ago, pianist Hiromi Uhera has experienced from what I will call the Oscar Peterson curse—criticism for her unashamed displays of technical virtuosity. Peterson in fact was an early supporter, as were Ahmad Jamal and Chick Corea. Three of the greatest jazz pianists to walk the earth saw what most critics and audiences are now able to recognize—beneath her razzle-dazzle physical skill ...

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Interview

Wayne Escoffery Honored In New Haven

Source: Ted Ricci
March 29, 2012

Articulate, well-mannered and courtly, Wayne Escoffery, one of today's finest, most exciting jazz saxophonists, speaks softly and creates passionate but never ego-driven music. Matinee idol handsome and a regal 6-foot-4 presence—non-musical attributes that have landed him modeling and acting gigs including bit parts on TV commercials for Grey Goose vodka and Mitsubishi cars—the London-born musician of West Indian heritage has been content to do his forceful, expressive speaking through his horn. A summa cum laude graduate of The Hartt School ...

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Interview

Jazz Quartet Gives Pianist A Chance To Shine

Source: Ted Ricci
March 29, 2012

Some jazz artists spend much of their careers without hitting it big, only to finally emerge into the spotlight and enjoy the recognition they deserved all along. Duke Ellington was a brilliant bandleader and composer, but it was arranger Billy Strayhorn who wrote “Chelsea Bridge," “Lush Life" and “Take the 'A' Train." And guitarist Pat Metheny might not have arrived at such a successful fusion of jazz and rock without pianist and collaborator Lyle Mays. Until recently, Laurence Hobgood has ...

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Interview

Interview: John Scofield

Source: JazzWax by Marc Myers
March 28, 2012

John Scofield has one of the most distinctive sounds of all the electric guitarists who came of age in the jazz-fusion era in the early 1970s. John is able to make his notes ring like a bell, and his lines are horn-like, living in the space just where rock meets the funky blues. [Photo of John Scofield in 1968 by Joe Marone] John is perhaps best known today for his period with Miles Davis, though he has recorded plenty of ...

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Interview

How Marilyn Monroe changed Ella Fitzgerald's life

Source: Groove Notes
March 22, 2012

If asked “Who played an important role in the musical career of Ella Fitzgerald?" you might respond with names like Chick Webb, Louis Armstrong, Norman Granz, and Dizzy Gillespie. The name Marilyn Monroe, however, might not come to mind. While touring in the '50s under the management of Norman Granz, Ella, like many African-American musicians at the time, faced significant adversity because of their race, especially in the Jim Crow states. Granz was a huge proponent of civil rights, and ...

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Interview

1979 Stan Getz Interview Unearthed at All About Jazz!

Source: All About Jazz
March 20, 2012

Bob Kenselaar's Jazz in the Aquarian Age column continues at AAJ with an unearthed 1979 interview with tenor saxophonist Stan Getz. “The music that Stan Getz made over the years was consistently moving and powerful," says Kenselaar, in his introduction to this interview, originally published in The Aquarian Weekly. “But he was probably putting me on a little when he said he was going to 'blow the walls down' in New York, for a series of shows. When someone gives ...

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Interview

Maxine Gordon Reminisces About Dexter Gordon and More at All About Jazz!

Source: All About Jazz
March 19, 2012

More than just the wife, manager and posthumous advocate for the late tenor giant Dexter Gordon, Maxine Gordon is a scholar, researcher, and archivist who has done pioneering research on jazz in Harlem in the 1930s and the history of jazz in the Bronx, NY. A lifelong jazz fan who is currently working on a new book that will profile three important women in jazz—trombonist Melba Liston, organist Shirley Scott, and singer Maxine Sullivan, Maxine Gordon is a force in ...

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