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Lage Lund: Idlewild
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 ...
read moreJohn Scofield: Uncle John's Band
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 ...
read moreJohn Scofield: Uncle John's Band
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 ...
read moreJohn Scofield: Uncle John's Band
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 ...
read moreLage Lund: Idlewild
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 ...
read moreVicente Archer: Short Stories
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 ...
read moreSeamus Blake: Bellwether
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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