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Jazz Articles about Jeff Lederer
Jeff Lederer with Mary LaRose: Schoenberg on the Beach
by Jerome Wilson
Saxophonist Jeff Lederer has used several unexpected inspirations for musical projects over the years, such as Shaker hymns and the writings of Herman Melville. Schoenberg on the Beach may be the most audacious thing he has ever done. It blends the compositions of Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern and the sounds of Coney Island together into an intriguing song cycle performed by a team of exceptional jazz musicians. Schoenberg lived in Los Angeles in the latter part of ...
read moreJeff Lederer: Balls of Simplicity
by Mark Corroto
To describe Jeff Lederer's latest offering, borrow a catchphrase from Monty Python's Flying Circus, and now for something completely different." The saxophonist, clarinetist and composer might be best known for reimagining the music of Albert Ayler in both the traditions of the Shaker Christian sect or in a sea shanties format, his irreverent reimagining of Dixieland music with Swing N' Dix, and his horns in drummer Matt Wilson's ensembles. Lederer's Balls of Simplicity moves into the world of chamber music, ...
read moreLeap Day Trio: Live at The Cafe Bohemia
by Jerome Wilson
Drummer Matt Wilson and tenor saxophonist Jeff Lederer have worked on many projects together, over a thirty-year period, covering everything from Christmas songs to the poetry of Carl Sandburg. This particular album finds them in a stripped-down trio, playing some of their most intense music ever, live at New York's reopened Cafe Bohemia. The trio's third member is bassist Mimi Jones, a recent acquaintance of both men, who fits right in with their freewheeling dialogues. Lederer blows with ...
read moreMatt Wilson: Live at The Cafe Bohemia
by Mike Jurkovic
From its modest opening in 1955 until its closing in 1960, 15 Barrow Street in Greenwich Village, aka Cafe Bohemia, housed such progressive jazz creators as Oscar Pettiford, Horace Silver and Kenny Dorham. Charlie Parker, who lived across the street, was booked to open the club and play for drinks but passed away before his run began. Cannonball Adderley made his New York debut there sitting in for Pettiford's regular sax man Jerome Richardson. A slew of hydrogen hot discs, ...
read moreTed Kooshian: Hubub!
by Edward Blanco
New York pianist and keyboardist Ted Kooshian continues his love affair with classic TV, cartoon themes and the pop scene, on Hubub!, offering a selection of striking originals influenced by his enthusiastic love for pop culture," which includes tributes to actors Steve McQueen and William Shatner of Star Trek fame. The album's sole standard is Leonard Bernstein's classic Somewhere" from the West Side Story play, distinguishing this version from so many others with an atypically jaunty arrangement from the pianist. ...
read moreTed Kooshian: Hubub!
by Jack Bowers
There are two ways of looking at Hubub!, pianist Ted Kooshian's fifth album as leader. The first is, nothing new here"; and the second, everything is new here." On the one hand, Kooshian's able quintet hews closely to the post-bop canon which has given rise to its fabric; on the other, they do so within the framework of Kooshian's bright and engaging melodies, none of which seems commonplace or shopworn. Kooshian wrote nine of the album's eleven ...
read moreMary LaRose: Out Here
by Jerome Wilson
Vocalist Mary LaRose has long been putting vocals, with and without words, to the works of modern jazz composers such as Albert Ayler, Ornette Coleman, Charlie Haden and Eric Dolphy. This CD is her first full-length exploration of Dolphy, probing the free-wheeling elusiveness of his work with a group which includes several of the instruments he used in his recordings, cello, vibraphone, and bass clarinet. LaRose approaches Dolphy's music by putting lyrics to some tunes, singing wordlessly on ...
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