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Jazz Articles about Wayne Smith Jr.
David Larsen: Cohesion
by Jack Bowers
For Cohesion, baritone saxophonist David Larsen's tenth album as leader of his own ensemble, he chose as his teammates a quartet of East Coast musicians who so impressed him during a tour of the Northwest that he invited them back to his Seattle, Washington home base to take part in a workshop, play some gigs and ultimately record Cohesion with him. As it turns out, it was a splendid decision, as Larsen and the others, even though ...
read moreTyler Mitchell Octet: Sun Ra's Journey Featuring Marshall Allen
by Alberto Bazzurro
Alternando momenti in cui si avverte chiara l'eredità del dedicatario dell'opera (sua la metà dei brani) ad altri un po' più routinieri, i primi e i secondi impreziositi dai graffi dell'ospite d'onore Marshall Allen, che di Sun Ra fu come tutti sappiamo uomo di fiducia per svariati decenni (e che ai tempi dell'incisione in oggetto, live allo Smalls nell'agosto 2021, aveva da qualche mese varcato la soglia dei 97!), si sdipana questo pregevole lavoro a firma di Tyler Mitchell, newyorchese, ...
read moreTyler Mitchell: Sun Ra's Journey Featuring Marshall Allen
by Mark Corroto
Sun Ra's Journey from the Tyler Mitchell Octet signals listeners to begin their own happy joy dance. Recorded live at Smalls Jazz Club in August 2021, the music is an animating run through six familiar Sun Ra compositions, plus plenty of surprises. Tyler Mitchell is a Ra alumnus who can be heard on the Black Saint recordings Hours After (1989) and Reflections In Blue (1987), Live In Kalisz 1986 (Lanquidity Records, 2019) and the 1986 studio session Prophet ...
read moreTyler Mitchell: Sun Ra's Journey Featuring Marshall Allen
by Mike Jurkovic
Along with elder alum, alto saxophonist Marshall Allen, Sun Ra's Journey Featuring Marshall Allen, the second of bassist Tyler Mitchell's deep dives into Sun Ra's master playbook, breaks glorious from the start. As an entry into the Smalls Live Living Masters Series, this octane-infused set was recorded live in 2022 at Smalls in NYC as the city began to cautiously emerge from eighteen months of pandemic-induced nightmare and doom. Care Free" greets all fellow Arkestra crewmen and women ...
read moreTyler Mitchell: Dancing Shadows
by Mike Jurkovic
There's a buzz to Dancing Shadows that is akin to the first time one stumbled upon a late 1950s to late 1960s Blue Note, Riverside, Verve, Impulse! or Prestige recording and time just stopped and the music took you places you were eager to go whether you knew where you were going or not. You stared at the cover, the wall, into the new, opening world. It may well have been your first mind-altering experience without, (or in conjunction with) ...
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