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Marcus Roberts And The Modern Jazz Generation At The Kimmel Center
Marcus Roberts and the Modern Jazz Generation Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts Perelman Theater Philadelphia, PA October 11, 2019 Marcus Roberts is one of the great jazz pianists of his generation, coming up in the 1980s in Wynton Marsalis' band and since then more or less following Marsalis' emphasis on playing jazz classics rather than heading in new directions. He has developed a solid track record on his ...
read moreRez Abbasi: A Throw Of Dice
Rez Abbasi has written a score for a 1929 movie—not an everyday jazz endeavor, but that is what the guitarist/composer does with his thirteenth recording. This after-the-fact soundtrack composing, though rare, is not unprecedented. In 2015 guitarist Aram Bajakian wrote and self produced a recording--an unofficial soundtrack--to the 1969 Soviet film The Color Of Pomegranates, an exploration of the life of the Armenian poet, Sayat-Nova. Abbasi, for his inspiration, writes a score for the vintage black and white ...
read moreRavi Coltrane Quartet at the New Hazlett Theater
Ravi Coltrane Quartet New Hazlett Theater Pittsburgh, PA October 5, 2019 Since 2007, the Kente Arts Alliance (KAA) has worked diligently to underscore the relationship between the arts and community by providing accessible cultural programming within the city of Pittsburgh. KAA has hosted a number of elder jazz statesmen, including Hugh Masakela, Billy Harper, and Geri Allen, and next-generation voices such as James Carter, Antonio Hart, and Charenée Wade. Mensah Wali, a member of Kente's ...
read moreEnrico Rava - Joe Lovano: Roma
Pristinely recorded in November 2018, at Rome's Auditorium Parco della Musica, Roma rises from fertile, anticipatory mists like a great host of ECM recordings past, present, and future do and will. Quietly coalescing around the polyphonic, noir-impressionism of master Italian trumpeter Enrico Rava's vaporous “Interiors" are Rava's masterful saxophone counterpart Joe Lovano, accompanied by the avant derring-do of long-time Rava collaborator pianist Giovanni Guidi, double bassist Dezron Douglas and drummer Gerald Cleaver. Though it is the first time ...
read moreHildur Gudnadottir: Telling Stories with Music
Musician and composer Hildur Gudnadottir has spent the past decade creating some of the most unique and indelible music and film scores in modern memory. Much like her fellow Icelanders Jóhann Jóhannsson and Ólafur Arnalds, Gudnadóttir has been composing weighty and layered ambiances and soundscapes. Her solo work obliterates the line between contemporary classical music and improvisation thus sculpturing spontaneous inventions into mesmerizing and brooding compositions. Her arsenal is the cello called “omar" which is a prepared cello combined with ...
read moreDo the Jazz Shuffle
This week we have have decided to do the jazz shuffle, and by shuffle we don't mean the jazz rhythm, but the feature that allows to play anything on a hard-drive in a randomized order. A perfect approach to revel through unexpected pairings, daring juxtapositions and accidental non sequiturs. After all if one is careful to only add great music in her/his ipod or music collection, then no matter how random the selection is, it'll sound good. ...
read moreMariangela Cagnetta: e-motion
A glance at the track listing on this album might prompt the title of another tune--"So What's New?" However, after a thorough listening, a more appropriate musical response could be “I Never Knew." e-motion is an innovative, fascinating and marvelously performed modern perspective on eleven jazz standards delivered by superior musicians. The ensemble is minimal--a vocalist, an electric bassist and a drummer. That's it. The musicians' creative output is anything but. Vocalist Mariangela Cagnetta is an incredibly ...
read moreThe Modern Jazz Quartet and the Third Stream (1956 - 1961)
As the Modern Jazz Quartet, members of which were once Dizzy Gillespie's rhythm section in the 1940s, moved into the 1960s, they continued to swing in their own quiet way, even as their music director, pianist John Lewis, explored the third stream, a synthesis of jazz and classical music. Having been founded in 1952, the MJQ was active as a unit until 1974, then reunited periodically for another twenty years, until drummer Connie Kay's death in 1994. Playlist ...
read morePureum Jin: The Real Blue
Although alto saxophonist Pureum Jin would no doubt shrug her shoulders and ask “what's the big deal," the fact remains that she is a South Korean woman playing American jazz and doing so in a way that affirms conclusively that the country's inbred art form is not only universal but gender-neutral. On her debut album, the rather recent graduate of the Manhattan School of Music sounds as assured and comfortable in the idiom as almost any native-born player--male or female—you'd ...
read moreDan McCarthy: City Abstract
The concept of homecoming is inextricably linked to the music that Dan McCarthy presents on City Abstract. Recorded in May of 2019, shortly after he had returned to his native Toronto after fifteen years in New York, this date finds the vibraphonist bowing to two of his biggest influences: pianist Carla Bley and vibraphonist Gary Burton. Those lodestars provide solid inspiration and clear direction for McCarthy, who works his way through originals and a few choice covers with a balanced ...
read moreHiromi: Spectrum
A beacon for jazz to come, since her adrenaline-pumped debut Another Mind (Telarc, 2003), pianist-composer Hiromi Uehara launches herself into her fourth decade with Spectrum, her second album alone at her Yamaha. The music, she hopes, celebrates the closing of one decade and the opening of the next and, without pause, it does, brimming with all the capricious three-dimensional imagination and invention that indelibly mark many fine recordings--her first solo Place To Be (Telarc, 2010), Voice (Telarc, 2011), ...
read moreInto Each Life Some Rain Must Fall
This week we feature new releases from flutist Haruna Fukazawa, vocalists Svetlana, Emma Frank and Jazzmeia Horn, soprano saxophonist and flutist Jane Bunnett & Maqueque, plus a rediscovered Miles Davis recording, with birthday shout outs to Doris Tauber (composer of “Them There Eyes"), Claire Martin, Tom Wopat, Alyssa Allgood and Lorraine Feather, among others. Playlist The DIVA Jazz Orchestra “East Coast Andy" from The Diva Jazz Orchestra 25th Anniversary Project (ArtistShare) 00:00 Tom Wopat “I Won't Dance" from ...
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