Jazz Articles

Shawn Purcell: Symmetricity

by Geannine Reid
December 25, 2019

Guitarist Shawn Purcell has enjoyed a busy career with 15 years as a member of the military Big Bands in Washington DC. From 1996-2004, he was the guitarist in the US Air Force premier jazz ensemble, The Airmen of Note. During his time with “The Note," Purcell performed throughout the world, including England, Germany, Turkey, Luxembourg, The Azores, Belgium, Oman, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Italy, Kuwait and Bahrain. This tradition continues with Purcell currently holding the guitar slot with the ...

William Flynn: The Songbook Project

by Don Phipps
January 18, 2018

The Songbook Project from guitarist William Flynn provides jazz enthusiasts with great arrangements of some top-flight songs from the popular music catalog. On this album, one can hear jazz versions of music by the Smashing Pumpkins, Oasis, Radiohead, Nine Inch Nails, and Jewel. The musicians all add color to the music. “Tonight Tonight" opens with harmony provided by Pete Mills' saxophone and Flynn's guitar. This is followed by charming and ebullient solos by pianist Lucas Holmes, Flynn and ...

Darden Purcell: Easy Living

by C. Michael Bailey
March 10, 2017

Working backwards, I discovered DC-area jazz vocalist and educator Darden Purcell with her second recording, Where the Blue Begins (Armored Records, 2016). It was an impressive recital with the nominal theme of twilight winding through its repertoire. While less thematically focused, Easy Living remains a well programmed set of eleven standards, “My Funny Valentine" thankfully not among them. Easy Living smacks of youthfully precocious invention, a collection of master musicians trying their individual talents out in creative ways. ...

Darden Purcell: Where the Blue Begins

by C. Michael Bailey
March 7, 2017

Dr. Darden Purcell waited eight years to record Where the Blue Begins as a follow up to her debut recording Easy Living (Armored Records, 2009). The Dr. part? Yes, well Dr. Darden is the Director of Jazz Studies, Jazz Voice at George Mason University, and holds a doctorate of Musical Arts in Jazz. Her bona fides aside, Darden, is as much a vocalist as an educator and each role feeds the other in a most convenient relationship. Easy Living is ...

Hajime Yoshida: Unlimitation

by Jack Bowers
April 13, 2014

As interest in jazz continues to wane in the land of its birth it remains strong elsewhere, especially in Japan, where jazz of all stripes is welcomed with open arms. Although guitarist Hajime Yoshida hails from Ichikawa, Japan, and nurtured his love for the music while there, he presently resides in Brooklyn, NY, of all places, and that is where his debut album, Unlimitation, was recorded in 2012. After moving to the U.S. at age eighteen, Yoshida studied at the ...

Tyler Mire Big Band: Enter the Atmosph-Mire

by Nicholas F. Mondello
July 31, 2013

Originally televised back in the black-and-white 1960s, Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone broadcast an episode--now classic--in which miniature alien spacemen land and terrorize a woman who is frightfully alone in her farmhouse. The cover art depicting happy little “musician-nauts" walking in space notwithstanding, Enter the Atmosph-Mire does no terrorizing. It does, however, shoot for, hit, and display the stars.Dallas-based trumpeter/composer/arranger Tyler Mire (pronounced “Meer") has enlisted a cadre of Big D's best here and hands them a musical ...

Axel's Axiom: Uncommon Sense

by Edward Blanco
January 18, 2012

Since graduating from Boston's Berklee College of Music in 2004, German-born pianist Axel Schwintzer has kept busy teaching, playing throughout New England, performing at the prestigious Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC, and playing various venues in the New York City area since relocating there in 2007. Axel's Axiom may not be familiar to most jazz audiences, but is Schwintzer's second group, with Uncommon Sense representing the sextet's recording debut.With the Grammy Award-winning Yellowjackets--clearly one ...

Michel Reis: Point Of No Return

by Wilbert Sostre
April 15, 2011

The trio on Michel Reis' Point Of No Return is a testament to the international character of jazz music, especially in the 21th century. A pianist/composer from Luxemburg, Reis studied jazz performance and composition at Berklee College of Music. Adam Cruz is a Latin American drummer, born in New York, whose experience includes playing with Chick Corea and Danilo Perez. Bassist Tal Gamlieli is another amazing musician coming from Israel. The common ground here is the international language of jazz. ...

Michel Reis: Point of No Return

by Dan McClenaghan
March 3, 2011

With Point of No Return, pianist Michel Reis--born in Luxembourg and now New York-based after formal education at Berklee School of Music and the New England Conservatory--has recorded an album of atmospheric, often somber, and consistently beautiful music. The twenty-something musician avoids the trap into which so many budding artists fall: that of mixing styles and concepts on a single set, trying to show off everything they can do.The finely focused, mostly piano trio effort is augmented on ...

Peter Brötzmann: A Night In Sana'a

by Mark Corroto
January 30, 2010

Reaching across cultures is nothing new for jazz artists, and certainly jazz (by definition) is the amalgamation of ethnic European, African, Afro-Cuban and American blues music. With this recording by free jazz patriarch Peter Brötzmann in Yemen, the junction is not only of different cultures but of different centuries.

Record label chief Uli Armbruster shared recordings of traditional Yemeni music with the saxophonist, convincing him to travel to Sana'a in 2004 to perform. He arrived with Chicagoan and ...