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Jazz Articles about Brian Swartz

4
Album Review

Lauren White: Making It Up As We Go Along

Read "Making It Up As We Go Along" reviewed by Nicholas F. Mondello


With this, her fifth album, Los Angeles-based Renaissance lady, Lauren White offers eleven intriguing selections across a range of styles and sources, backed up by some of the city's best. While shrewdly avoiding the tried, true and over-recorded, White uses her subtle skills with taste and maturity. Interestingly, the album plays sequentially as if it were a performance. That is one of its attractions. Launching things, Steely Dan's “I'm Not the Same Without You" is a coy ...

4
Album Review

Mark Winkler: Late Bloomin' Jazzman

Read "Late Bloomin' Jazzman" reviewed by Edward Blanco


Veteran singer, platinum-selling lyricist and songwriter Mark Winkler delivers his twentieth album as leader, Late Bloomin' Jazzman, beginning with a George Gershwin standard, ending with a Gershwin tribute and, in between, presenting romantic ballads, a bit of swing and a touch of bossa. An educator at UCLA who teaches the art of songwriting, Winkler brings this remarkable talent to the fore on this album, providing his own lyrics to seven of the twelve songs which he suddenly realized “talk about ...

4
Album Review

Mark Winkler: Late Bloomin' Jazzman

Read "Late Bloomin' Jazzman" reviewed by Richard J Salvucci


Anyone who can hold their own on a stage on in a studio with Cheryl Bentyne cannot be all bad, right? Even if one's taste runs more to Harry Connick, Jr than to Mark Murphy, it is difficult not to get seriously into Mark Winkler. Oh, he can sing, for sure, but even if he could not carry a tune, he is a lyricist for the ages. Not all ages, mind you. But for those of a certain age, sensibility, ...

13
Album Review

MONK'estra: MONK'estra Plays John Beasley

Read "MONK'estra Plays John Beasley" reviewed by Jack Bowers


The MONK'estra is actually a number of groups of various shapes and sizes, from duo to big band, assembled under the guiding hand of composer, arranger & pianist John Beasley to—wait for it!—"play John Beasley," an artist whose admiration for Thelonious Sphere Monk is clear throughout this buoyant and resourceful album, as it was on Volumes 1 and 2 of the series, in which the MONK'estra “played Monk." Beasley wrote eight of the album's fourteen genial numbers ...

10
Album Review

John Beasley: MONK'estra Plays John Beasley

Read "MONK'estra Plays John Beasley" reviewed by Jim Worsley


In 2016 John Beasley gifted us with John Beasley Presents Monk'estra Volume 1 (Mack Avenue). The buzz of that superb record led to John Beasley Presents Monk'estra Volume 2 (Mack Avenue, 2017). Both records were Grammy nominated for Best Large Jazz Ensemble Album. They were both more than Grammy worthy, but alas the competition is fierce. Beasley has been more than a Thelonious Monk fan throughout his life, including his now over forty years in the music industry. ...

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Take Five With...

Take Five With Brian Swartz

Read "Take Five With Brian Swartz" reviewed by AAJ Staff


Meet Brian Swartz:Instrument(s): trumpet, flugelhorn, Akai/Steiner EVI.Teachers and/or influences? Clarence Mitchell, John Coppola, Delbert Bump, Bill Bing, Gary Pratt, Bobby Shew, Tony Lujan, John Thomas, Tom Harrell, Uan Rasey.I knew I wanted to be a musician when... When I started high school, I wanted to be in the band but also play on the football team. I tried out for the team and they wanted me to play tight end. I reported for the ...

184
Album Review

Brian Swartz Trio: Three

Read "Three" reviewed by Michael P. Gladstone


Trumpeter Brian Swartz came up with an interesting concept for this album. Going back to 1979, he cites a series of four albums by Chet Baker made for the Steeplechase label (The Touch of Your Lips, Daybreak, This Is Always, Someday My Prince Will Come) with with a trio that eliminated both the drummer and the pianist. Baker was known for having a preference for drummer-less small combos. The sidemen for these dates were guitarist Doug Raney (son of Jimmy ...


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