Articles
Daily articles carefully curated by the All About Jazz staff. Read our popular and future articles.
Joining the Dots from Partisans to Joey Berkley
Joining the dots here is creating a musical image in the listeners mind rather like a puzzle. You start at one point and finish at another, the image is created. Musically there are improvisers like Rich Halley, a master in Avishai Cohen and the band Partisans each contributing to the final picture. Playlist Partisans “That's Not His Bag" from Nit De Nit (Whirlwind Recordings) 1:58 Hot Heroes “Nogalez" fromDays after the Rodeo (Eclipse Music) 07:54 Gordon Grdina ...
read moreGordon Grdina, Karl Berger & Jason Kao Hwang, Byron Asher & Colin Hinton
Vancouver's Gordon Grdina is masterfully adept at guitar and oud, so that flexibility leads to many possibilities for playing opportunities, from jazz and improv settings to his world music group, Haram. This episode finds Grdina opening things up with music from two very recent recordings: Skin and Bones (with Matthew Shipp and Mark Helias) and Cooper's Park with his Quartet (Russ Lossing, Satoshi Takeishi and Oscar Noriega). You'll also hear some state-of-the-art improvisation from violinist Jason Kao Hwang and pianist/vibraphonist ...
read moreGordon Grdina: Cooper's Park
Cooper's Park's eighteen minute centerpiece crashes into energetic existence sounding like someone just remembered to push record while the ensemble was in high flight mid jam. Flailing majestically away, guitarist Gordon Grdina, alto saxophonist/bass clarinetist Oscar Noriega and pianist Russ Lossing are heard early working overtime on every level from solo to tag-team tandem, giving, taking, trading instigating and echoing the rush of melodies that inhabit the track's sprawling, malleable margins. Ignoring musical boundaries comes second nature to these guys ...
read moreGordon Grdina Quartet: Cooper's Park
Since the release of his first album in 2006, Think Like the Waves (Songlines), Gordon Grdina has sought a musical language that would allow him to incorporate his dual interests in the electric guitar and the oud. It is tempting to view this as an “East meets West" process, wherein Grdina's jazz and rock-infused guitar playing melds somehow with the Arabic influences that typically contextualize oud performance. But that is not entirely accurate, as Grdina's recordings are more likely to ...
read moreGordon Grdina: Ejdeha
Fifteen years into his study of Arabia's mysterious and resonant oud, Vancouver, Canada-based guitarist Gordon Grdina has released Ejdeha, with his equally mysterious and resonant ensemble, The Marrow. Expanding out from his debut, Think Like the Waves (Songlines, 2006), recorded with Gary Peacock and Paul Motian, Grdina takes his jazz improvisations further into the poetic exoticism of the Middle East. “Telesm" pulls the veil back on Ejdeha, as The Marrow--bassist Mark Helias, cellist Hank Roberts, and Hamin Honari, ...
read moreGordon Grdina/Mark Helias: No Difference
No Difference takes place at the crossroads of the known and unknown, expected and surprising, and fenced in and free. More importantly, it's an album built upon the bonds of shared experience. Each of the four musicians involved with this project can be paired off with at least one other in their respective backstories. Grdina and bassist Mark Helias play together every time the guitarist/oud master makes his way from his home base in Vancouver to New York; Helias and ...
read moreGordon Grdina's Haram: Her Eyes Illuminate
Vancouver-based oudist/guitarist Gordon Grdina has been bending genres and creating East-meets-West contexts for his instruments for quite some time. He put his own spin on modern jazz with Box Cutter, melded outré twentieth century chamber ideals with Arabian themes with the East Van Trio and created a Persian/Arabian/Indian hybrid with Sangha. Now, Grdina turns his attention to folk themes and popular music crafted by Iranian and Egyptian artists over the past century with this exciting dectet. Haram, ...
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Contest Giveaway
ELIGIBLE WINNERS: 10 | DAYS REMAINING: 26
Prize: 10 copies of Rhythm Abstraction: Azure by Frank Macchia
Rhythm Abstraction: Azure is the first volume of new compositions created as a follow up to 2018’s release Rhythm Kaleidoscope. As with that release, Brock Avery improvised drum and percussion solos. Frank Macchia then composed music for woodwinds and orchestra to Brock’s creations. Azure is the first of three extended play albums of 6-7 compositions which will be released starting in January and followed up in April and July. In Azure we have a created a group of pieces that continue our quest for honoring the art of improvisation with a “stream-of-consciousness” sense of composition,...
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