Jazz Articles

Chris Standring: Wonderful World

by Richard J Salvucci
September 7, 2021

Many years ago, there was a radio station, WJBR, broadcasting from Wilmington, Delaware. The call sign stood for Just Beautiful Radio and that was precisely what you got. No-one called it easy listening or anything like that--it was the early 1960s--but listeners got a predictable dose of Percy Faith, Ray Conniff, Frank Chacksfield, nothing too challenging. The announcers had a predictable style as well—modulated, mellow, reassuring. In those days, with the possibility of nuclear war never far from anyone's mind, ...

Chris Standring: Wonderful World

by Pierre Giroux
August 19, 2021

Chris Standring is a Los Angeles-based contemporary jazz guitarist who was originally raised in Buckinghamshire, England. He has always had an itch to record an album of standards and that was scratched with the release of Wonderful World . Through the marvels of technology, Standring was able to record the trio tracks in several locations in California with some bold face names such as Peter Erskine, Chuck Berghofer and Randy Brecker, while the orchestral input was arranged and conducted by ...

Chris Standring: Wonderful World

by Jack Bowers
July 29, 2021

Wonderful World, the fourteenth album as leader by British guitarist Chris Standring, was no doubt recorded with the best of intentions. And make no mistake, the music is warm and lovely, furnishing an opulent showcase for Standring's mellow guitar. Aside from that, however, there's not a whole lot to say. Standring's “orchestra" consists of a nineteen-member string section, while Geoff Gascoyne's syrupy arrangements call to mind popular string-laden sessions from the 1950s and '60s, “easy listening" albums for “late-night lovers" ...

Chris Standring: Sunlight

by Jeff Winbush
April 25, 2018

When building a house, who's more important? The architect who designs it or the working stiff that puts hammer to nail? Trick question. They're both important and when it comes to playing that guitar thing, Chris Standring is a working stiff. The world needs working stiffs. The world can't run on dreamers alone. It needs doers too. It needs workhorses, not just show horses. Chris Standring is a workhorse. Sunlight is the 11th album by the ...

Chris Standring: Ten

by Jeff Winbush
March 25, 2016

Eight years have passed since Chris Standring's Love and Paragraphs (Ultimate Vibe, 2008) when he last met expectation as a seasoned, if not splashy smooth jazz guitar slinger. Then Standring had something of a musical epihamy where he became simultaneously restless and ambitious. The result was the lavish Blue Bolero (Ultimate Vibe, 2010), a radical departure for the British born artist where he fused jazz combos with a string section for a distinctive classical feel. Standring followed up ...

Chris Standring: Don't Talk, Dance!

by Jeff Winbush
April 18, 2014

If jazz is to avoid being relegated to the pit of obsolescence where VCR's, pet rocks and NBC's fall lineup for the last five years has been consigned to it won't be enough to simply continue catering to the true believers and faithful die-hards that currently maintains the genre. Jazz will have to go places it hasn't been before and go after potential listeners who think of it as the music their grandparents listened to. One of those ...

Chris Standring: Electric Wonderland

by Jeff Winbush
March 31, 2012

At some point during every artist's career, if they truly consider themselves as artists, they must ask themselves a question of truth. This question is not so much, “Am I following the truth?" but rather “Am I following my truth?"The answer to this question goes a long way in determining whether the artist plays it safe and stays in their comfort zone, or takes the bolder, but potentially more interesting and satisfying course of following their muse wherever ...

Chris Standring: Blue Bolero

by Jeff Winbush
March 20, 2010

Playing jazz in America would serve as a great cover for someone in the witness protection program. A musician can labor at jazz for years and put together a nice body of work, but the music industry, the media, and the public may barely notice in their search for the next teenage pop star.

Chris Standring has never made an album quite like Blue Bolero. Standring could have stayed in a smooth jazz comfort zone of safe and innocuous music. ...

Chris Standring: Love and Paragraphs

by Jeff Winbush
July 21, 2008

Once upon a time Wes Montgomery plugged in his guitar and changed the way the world listened to jazz. Since then the guitar pick has been passed on to artists including George Benson, Earl Klugh, John Scofield and Pat Metheny, and each and every one has pushed the genre just a little bit further.With Love and Paragraphs, guitarist Chris Standring makes a fair bid to push it the next step forward. This is as close to being a ...