Jazz Articles about Burton Greene

Spinifex, Greene / Smith / Moses & Devin Brahja Waldman Ra Kalam Bob Moses

by Maurice Hogue
January 27, 2023

This edition of One Man's Jazz tends to a lot of music out on the edge, starting with a tune from a 2019 release called Life's Intense Mystery by Burton Greene, Damon Smith & Bob Moses, before heading to the powerful and unpredictable band from Amsterdam, Spinifex; they've added singers to the mix on their latest. After that check out the sounds of the Blue Lines Trio, also from Amsterdam, Peter Van Huffel's Gorilla Mask, the Chicago guitar/bass duo of ...

Burton Greene: From Bomb To Balm

by Barbara Ina Frenz
December 18, 2020

Chicago-born pianist Narada Burton Greene (b.1937) can be called a veteran of the 1960s jazz avant-garde—the starting point of his universal musical life. In 1962, he moved to New York and founded, together with bassist Alan Silva, the Free Form Improvisational Ensemble, which played improvised music without preconceived compositional elements. In 1965, he became a member of the Jazz Composers Guild, founded by Bill Dixon and Cecil Taylor. The Jazz Composers Guild resonated with the community spirit that Greene had ...

Burton Greene / Perry Robinson: Two Voices In The Desert

by Lyn Horton
August 6, 2009

Pianist Burton Greene and clarinetist Perry Robinson have been close friends for a very long time. During those years, they have bonded with a common musical purpose that stems from free expression to the gentle molding of a life perspective. Working together in Greene's groups--Klezmokem and Klez-Edge--the pair has become identifiable with an open and unfettered sound, imbued with Eastern European origins. Outside of these larger groups, Greene and Robinson come together to present a unique and lively duo conversation ...

Burton Greene and Perry Robinson at the Zeitgeist Gallery, Boston, MA

by Lyn Horton
April 25, 2009

Burton Greene and Perry Robinson Outpost 128 / Zeitgeist Gallery Boston, Massachusetts April 11, 2009

Pianist Burton Greene and clarinetist Perry Robinson have known each other for two generations' worth of years. They first played together at Greene's loft in New York in 1965 in a trio, which included Joel Friedman on cello. The two were together in Greene's quartet, Klez-Edge, a recording for Tzadik, and will play again soon in another recording called ...

Klez-Edge: Ancestors, Mindreles, NaGila Monsters

by Elliott Simon
April 3, 2009

John Zorn once remarked to that in the '60s, “we didn't want to hear Jewish music at our Bar Mitzvahs, we wanted to hear Hendrix." Funny how a few decades and some intermarriage with post-bop jazz can change all that. However, if back then some very hip parents convinced the best free jazzers to do a Bar Mitzvah party set, the result could very likely have been something akin to this album. The amazing thing about this ...

Klez-Edge: Ancestors, Mindreles, NaGila Monsters

by Lyn Horton
June 29, 2008

Although rewards can come from listening to a recording where mixing styles is done through patching different samples together, the music on Ancestors, Mindreles, NaGila Monsters radiates out of the mindful integration of several identifiable musical idioms within the same performance spectrum.

A child of pianist Burton Greene's 1989 band Klezmokum, the group Klez-Edge does more than blend traditional Jewish, Eastern European folk and improvised musics; it also equalizes them in terms that are spiritual, joyful, plaintive, humorous and political. ...

Burton Greene and Laurence Cook Duo at Studio 234

by Lyn Horton
May 24, 2008

Burton Greene and Laurence Cook Studio 234 Cambridge, MA April 26, 2008 It was chilly for late April in New England. It had not rained for a while. And in a salon-type event, a small room filled with a motley grouping of chairs awaited an audience for a performance of two musicians, who live an ocean apart, but whose camaraderie in improvised music brought them to sit ten feet away from each ...