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Jazz Articles about Bill Stewart

7
Liner Notes

Lage Lund: Idlewild

Read "Lage Lund: Idlewild" reviewed by C. Andrew Hovan


An open and revealing format for any artist, the jazz trio offers rewards on many levels. Left in veracious hands, there is a spacious pocket that can be filled by any number of rhythmic and harmonic ideas, not to mention a freedom in melodic phrases which don't have to be constrained by strict chordal structures. On the other hand, it is the mere vulnerability of the format that can challenge all but the most seasoned musicians. With its ...

Album Review

John Scofield: Uncle John's Band

Read "Uncle John's Band" reviewed by Mario Calvitti


Dopo la parentesi del primo disco realizzato in completa solitudine, il chitarrista John Scofield torna alla formazione per lui più abituale del trio, ma non lo stesso con cui aveva inciso Swallow Tales sempre per la label tedesca. Al posto di Steve Swallow troviamo infatti il contrabbassista Vicente Archer, mentre alla batteria siede nuovamente il fido Bill Stewart. È una nuova formazione per Scofield, anche se i tre insieme al pianista e organista Gerald Clayton avevano registrato Combo 66 nel ...

19
Album Review

John Scofield: Uncle John's Band

Read "Uncle John's Band" reviewed by Ian Patterson


John Scofield's entire oeuvre can be roughly divided into groove-based or straight-ahead recordings. Yet even in maximum groove propulsion, as on A Go Go (Verve, 1998), to cite one stellar example, Scofield's grounding in straight-ahead jazz is never far from the surface. On the flip side, his most conventional jazz is always rhythmically vital. Uncle John's Band, the guitarist's third ECM album as leader, following Swallow Tales (2020) and John Scofield (2022), falls squarely in the latter category. And it ...

20
Album Review

John Scofield: Uncle John's Band

Read "Uncle John's Band" reviewed by Neil Duggan


Phil Lesh, Grateful Dead's bassist for over 30 years, claimed their basic inspiration came from the musical unions he saw in the Miles Davis Quartet along with the John Coltrane Quartet from the early 1960s. John Scofield and Lesh have played together on many occasions. So perhaps it is no surprise that the Grateful Dead anthem, “Uncle John's Band," written by guitarist Jerry Garcia and lyricist Robert Hunter, originally released on their album, Workingman's Dead (Warner Bros. 1970), should serve ...

2
Liner Notes

Lage Lund: Idlewild

Read "Lage Lund: Idlewild" reviewed by C. Andrew Hovan


An open and revealing format for any artist, the jazz trio offers rewards on many levels. Left in veracious hands, there is a spacious pocket that can be filled by any number of rhythmic and harmonic ideas, not to mention a freedom in melodic phrases which don't have to be constrained by strict chordal structures. On the other hand, it is the mere vulnerability of the format that can challenge all but the most seasoned musicians. With its ...

5
Album Review

Vicente Archer: Short Stories

Read "Short Stories" reviewed by Mike Jurkovic


Bassist Vicente Archer may be a Grammy winner with a long grand vintage (Nicholas Payton, John Scofield, Kenny Garrett, Norah Jones) but he has not revealed his own particular harvest as he does on the amicable and resilient Short Stories. Accompanied on what is technically his debut, fellow Scofield and Payton alum, drummer Bill Stewart and ever curious pianist Gerald Clayton bring to these stories a captivating, unified narrative. The soft, insistent tannins of “Mirai" opens Short Stories ...

6
Liner Notes

Seamus Blake: Bellwether

Read "Seamus Blake: Bellwether" reviewed by C. Andrew Hovan


The music speaks for itself. This timeworn axiom has often served as a suggestion that there's an intangible aspect to music's universal language that is somehow beyond mere words. In some cases this may be true, but on the other hand, this outlook has occasionally in the past served as a viable excuse for justifying music of a somewhat dubious nature.In recently talking with saxophonist Seamus Blake by phone from Vancouver, it occurred to me that his “less ...


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