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Noah Haidu: Doctone
by Dan McClenaghan
Pianist Kenny Kirkland never seemed particularly interested in attaining the high level of fame enjoyed by two of his early employers, trumpeter Wynton Marsalis and saxophonist Branford Marsalis. He worked first for Wynton, playing on four of the trumpeter's albums between 1981 and 1985, before moving into Branford's orbit, for eight albums between 1983 to 1998. These were breakout times for the famous brothers, burst-out-onto-the-scene times that were critical to their ultimate successes. And Kenny Kirkland was there, contributing his ...
read moreTodd Coolman & Trifecta: Collectables
by Dan Bilawsky
Bassist Todd Coolman readily cops to his collections in the liner essay for this delightful date, noting a fondness for accumulating baseball caps, photos and drawings of birds, timepieces, and antique fishing tackle. But it's his collections from the realm of music--also cited in his writing(s)--that shape this date. He's amassed a stockpile of favorite songs over the course of his storied career and he's filled his mental Rolodex with a cache of compatriots ideally suited to different projects. He ...
read moreTodd Coolman: Perfect Strangers
by Woodrow Wilkins
While the songs themselves aren't original to the band, the approach taken with Perfect Strangers is itself novel. Bassist Todd Coolman is an in-demand session player based in New York. He director of jazz studies at Purchase College and has also authored two books: The Bass Tradition and The Bottom Line. His associations over the years have included Horace Silver, Gerry Mulligan, Lionel Hampton and Benny Goodman, among others. For Perfect Strangers, Coolman brought ...
read moreTodd Coolman: Perfect Strangers
by Jerry D'Souza
A little bit of imagination is a good thing. Bassist Todd Coolman thought “outside the box" and came up with the idea of soliciting compositions from the public. He chose seven tunes which make up the program for the aptly titled Perfect Strangers. Hopefully, the voices that are heard here through Coolman, Eric Alexander (tenor saxophone), Brian Lynch (trumpet), Jim McNeely (piano) and John Riley (drums) will not remain strangers, and will continue to find avenues of expression for their ...
read moreTodd Coolman: Perfect Strangers
by Edward Blanco
Among the more in-demand musicians in New York, bassist and Director of Jazz Studies at Purchase College (SUNY), Todd Coolman and his Learning Community Quintet throw the dice here in a gamble to present an original concept album with a risky proposition clearly bound to pay musical dividends with critical acclaim. Perfect Strangers, Coolman's third album as leader, is a very apropos title for an ArtistShare Records project because, when referring to these seven new charts, it accurately ...
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