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Jazz Articles about George Schuller
Michael Musillami Trio: Block Party
by Troy Dostert
A relentlessly active and inventive guitarist whose first recordings date back to the '80s, Michael Musillami began to hit his stride in the '90s alongside veterans of the New York downtown scene such as bassist Mario Pavone, drummer Michael Sarin and saxophonist Thomas Chapin. But one of his foremost partnerships took shape in the early 2000s, when he first teamed with bassist Joe Fonda and drummer George Schuller, themselves long-standing veterans of creative jazz. Twenty years and ten albums later, ...
read moreDrummer George Schuller Talks about Lee Konitz
by S.G Provizer
George Schuller performed as percussionist with the recently deceased saxophonist Lee Konitz on and off since 1992. I covered one of their last jny: Boston concerts here. George has lived in Brooklyn since 1992 but is well-known in Boston. His father, Gunther Schuller, was a composer and musician of note and served as President of the New England Conservatory of Music from 1967-1977 and his brother Ed Schuller is an accomplished bassist. George is co-founder of the ensemble Orange Then ...
read moreGeorge Schuller's Circle Wide: Listen Both Ways
by Troy Collins
Listen Both Ways is the first studio recording by drummer George Schuller's longstanding Circle Wide quintet to concentrate primarily on his original compositions. The group's previous Playscape releases, 2003's Round 'Bout Now and 2008's Like Before, Somewhat After, paid homage to the seminal efforts of famous post-war bandleaders--trumpeter Miles Davis' Second Great Quintet on the former and pianist Keith Jarrett's American Quartet on the latter.Six of the album's eight tunes are staples of the unit's live sets, with ...
read moreGeorge Schuller: Like Before, But Fresh
by R.J. DeLuke
Throughout musical history, the influences of substantial artists, recorded works, or certain epochal periods, have their effect on contemporaries and ensuing generations. For those that make music, it shows up in their playing or composing. Tracking those influences, whether well-known sources or those under the radar, is not as important as the end result of an individual's statement.
Forward-thinking artists can find inventive ways of incorporating influences into personal statements. That's what Brooklyn-based drummer George Schuller ...
read moreGeorge Schuller's Circle Wide: Like Before, Somewhat After
by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio
This writer's familiarity with the physical concept known as dewpoint is as extensive as can be expected from someone who spent much of her science classes with a literary magazine hidden underneath her notebook. Dewpoint," the appropriately titled opening track of the sophomore release of George Schuller's Circle Wide, is perhaps as elucidating as any semester-long course in conveying what it means to reaching a threshold of precise saturation, neither failing to live up to the bar set high nor ...
read moreGeorge Schuller's Circle Wide: Like Before, Somewhat After
by Nic Jones
"Dewpoint," the appropriately titled opening track of Like Before, Somewhat After, the sophomore release of George Schuller's work with Circle Wide, is perhaps as elucidating as any semester-long course in conveying what it means to reaching a threshold of precise saturation, neither failing to live up to the bar set high nor causing discomfort by reaching too high and producing a work of pretentious chaos.
Dewpoint" is one of two original tracks on the record, the ...
read moreGeorge Schuller's Circle Wide: Like Before, Somewhat After
by John Sharpe
It's now some thirty-one years since the demise of Keith Jarrett's American Quartet," uniting Ornette Coleman alumni Dewey Redman and Charlie Haden with former Bill Evans drummer Paul Motian. That group's masterpiece and effective swansong was Survivors' Suite (ECM, 1976), and so it is fitting that two sections are reprised on drummer/composer George Schuller's affectionate tribute to the band, alongside four other Jarret pieces and two originals.
It takes both the vibes of Tom Beckham and ...
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