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Jazz Articles about John O'Gallagher

Album Review

Noah Preminger: Zigsaw: Music of Steve Lampert

Read "Zigsaw: Music of Steve Lampert" reviewed by Neri Pollastri


Noah Preminger prosegue nella pubblicazione di lavori estremamente interessanti, stavolta dirigendo e interpretando un'opera non sua, ma da lui commissionata al trombettista e compositore Steve Lampert—esperienze vastissime a partire da quelle giovanili con Lionel Hampton e Gerry Mulligan, fino a maturare una personale concezione dell'improvvisazione. Si tratta di un singolare brano unico, lungo oltre quarantotto minuti, fittamente strutturato, ma al tempo stesso illuminato dalle improvvisazioni dei singoli. Il titolo, Zigsaw, rimanda da un lato all'andamento zigzagante della musica, ...

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Album Review

Jeff Williams: Road Tales - Live At London Jazz Festival

Read "Road Tales - Live At London Jazz Festival" reviewed by Friedrich Kunzmann


Some live albums impress with the sophistication of restraint or sonic clarity, others simply boast energy. Veteran drummer Jeff Williams' Road Tales: Live At London Jazz Festival unmistakably belongs to the latter. Vested with two handfuls of original compositions and an adept cast of sidemen, Williams delivers a fiery set of saxophone-led post-bop that revisits a number of tunes from the drummer's past albums and presents a couple of new pieces. Since joining Whirlwind recordings, Williams has been ...

Album Review

Andrew Rathbun: Atwood Suites

Read "Atwood Suites" reviewed by Angelo Leonardi


Sassofonista e orchestratore canadese, Andrew Rathbun ha 47 anni e una ricca carriera alle spalle, svolta negli Stati Uniti con studi al New England Conservatory sotto la guida di Ran Blake e dal 1997 professionalmente a New York in vari contesti. A partire dal debutto del 1999 con Scatter Some Stones, ha inciso alcuni dischi da leader, il più noto dei quali è Sculpture (Fresh Sound 2002) inciso in quintetto col suo mentore Kenny Wheeler. Con quest'ultimo Rathbun ha collaborato ...

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Album Review

Noah Preminger Group: Zigsaw: Music Of Steve Lampert

Read "Zigsaw: Music Of Steve Lampert" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan


With Zigsaw: The Music of Steve Lampert, saxophonist Noah Preminger presents his most ambitious album to date. Trumpeter-composer Lampert writes cerebral, avant-garde compositions. Preminger, rather than diving into a collection of Lampert tunes, takes on a single forty-nine minute magnum opus piece that zigzags back and forth between structure and openness, with an all-star septet that creates a sometimes brash, sometimes dreamy and rambling sound. Describing this sound: a sonic jigsaw stew comprised of Miles Davis' Bitches Brew ...

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Album Review

Noah Preminger Group: Zigsaw: Music Of Steve Lampert

Read "Zigsaw: Music Of Steve Lampert" reviewed by Karl Ackermann


Tenor saxophonist Noah Preminger has dedicated considerable effort into his imprint on jazz variations of the delta blues with Some Other Time (Newvelle, 2016), Pivot: Live At The 55 Bar (Self-Produced, 2016) and Meditations on Freedom (Self-Produced, 2017). Zigsaw: Music of Steve Lampert is a departure in concept and content with a single extended track composed by Steve Lampert. With this album, Preminger hits a new peak with the fourteenth album in his prolific career. Steve Lampert is ...

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Album Review

Andrew Rathbun Large Ensemble: Atwood Suites

Read "Atwood Suites" reviewed by Jerome Wilson


Andrew Rathbun is a Canadian saxophonist who has made a major musical statement here with this collection of suites, two of which are based on the poetry of author Margaret Atwood. Rathbun's writing shows the influence of another Canadian, Kenny Wheeler, in its lush sonority, the frequent gorgeous flugelhorn solos by Tim Hagans and the role of Luciana Souza, who both sings Atwood's poetry with gentle forcefulness and moans wordlessly within the orchestral ensembles, the same way Wheeler often utilized ...

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Album Review

Andrew Rathbun: Atwood Suites

Read "Atwood Suites" reviewed by Paul Rauch


The mingling of jazz music and poetry is not a new concept. It has always been an amiable, yet at times, uncomfortable fit. From a verse standpoint, it is in many ways liberating. While most vocalized lyrics and spoken word forms rely on rhyme to speak to cadence and rhythm, free verse poetry liberates the narrative from the confinements of structure, and much like an improvising instrumentalist, takes spoken language into a intertwining duality with the melody within harmonic dimension. ...


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