Jazz News

Legendary Pianist Ahmad Jamal Profiled at AAJ

Source: All About Jazz
May 14, 2008

When asked what he's thinking about when he's at the piano, NEA Jazz Master and Kennedy Center Jazz Legend Ahmad Jamal replies, “Those songs that come up on my recordings or my concerts, sometimes I pull some things that are very distant and written years before I was here, things written by Mozart. That's the wonderful thing about music, the ability to interpret the good things beyond the wildest dreams of the composer. I'm doing what I do based on ...

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Art Pepper: Unreleased Art Volume III, Croydon

Source: Michael Ricci
May 14, 2008

Laurie Pepper's Widow's Taste label has just released Volume III in the series of Art Pepper performances. VOLUME III is a TWO DISC SET, a (nearly) complete concert performed in Croydon, England at the acoustically admirable Fairfield Hall. Art was, at this time, almost continually touring with the first of his comeback bands, and this band was TIGHT. They knew and understood the tunes and communicated as only true jazz people can in performance, like a team of rhythmic, lyric, ...

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Chris Crocco Fluid Trio at Smalls May 21st

Source: All About Jazz
May 14, 2008

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Jane Scheckter Tribute to Lena Horne

Source: Michael Ricci
May 14, 2008

Letting Loose, Lena Horne Style

Jane Scheckter will perform “From This Moment On" at 7 p.m., Tuesday through Thursday, at Broadway Baby, 318 West 53rd Street, Clinton; (212) 757-5808, broadwaybabybistro.com.

Ferocious. That is the word the pop-jazz singer Jane Scheckter applies to Lena Horne in “From This Moment On," her tribute to Ms. Horne, who is now 90. Ms. Scheckter recalled at Broadway Baby bistro on Wednesday evening that Ms. Horne, along with Bobby Short and Tony Perkins, was one ...

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New on JazzPianoOnline.com

Source: All About Jazz
May 14, 2008

Walking Bassline Part 1 and Part 2 Listen to virtually any jazz recording and you will hear it: the quarter note bassline walking up and down the scale providing both rhythm and harmony. This is the walking bassline and it is one of the defining elements of jazz. Playing a walking bassline over any set of changes is an essential skill not only for every bass player but for every pianist too. You will use the walking bassline in duos ...

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Hilario Duran Trio: Tour Canada 2008

Source: All About Jazz
May 14, 2008

Montreal, Quebec, CANADA - Cuban-Canadian pianist/ALMA Records recording artist Hilario Duran will lead the Hilario Duran Trio on a cross Canada tour, summer and fall of 2008. The Hilario Duran Trio will perform at this country's major jazz festivals and venues from coast to coast. This is the debut national tour as a leader for Hilario Duran, a multi award winning and internationally acclaimed Cuban-Latin jazz pianist, composer, arranger, bandleader and educator. The Hilario Duran Trio features the highly acclaimed ...

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Bassist Hugh Hopper Interviewed at AAJ

Source: All About Jazz
May 13, 2008

Hugh Hopper started out on his path through music as a stalwart of the British Canterbury scene, from which came bands including Soft Machine, of which Hopper was a member for five years, Caravan and Hatfield and The North. In a sense he's embodied the music which emerged from that scene, which might be best described as an idiosyncratic take on jazz-rock fusion. Any pigeonholing this might imply does him an injustice however, as it takes no account of his ...

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Dizzy Gillespie's Career CD

Source: All About Jazz
May 13, 2008

Dizzy Gillespie is the greatest post-war musician never to make a truly great album. Career: 1937-1992 (2 Disc Set)

Before bebop, of course, musicians did not make “albums", but merely 78 RPM singles. They recorded these “sides" in batches certainly, but they were not conceived of as groups of songs, and so the great recordings of Armstrong, Ellington, and Hawkins were released piecemeal and today are collected in anthologies that we think of as “great albums." But Dizzy ...

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