Jazz Articles
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John Pizzarelli: Stage & Screen
by Pierre Giroux
Guitarist/vocalist John Pizzarelli's Stage & Screen salutes songs from Broadway and Hollywood. However, there is also a subtext in five songs on the track list in which “time" is featured either prominently or covertly, as it deals with love lost, found, unrequited or déjà vu. In this recital, Pizzarelli is joined by bassist Mike Karn and pianist Isaiah J. Thompson as they work smoothly together to trace the harmonic seams and essence of each tune. The ...
read moreJohn Pizzarelli: Stage & Screen
by Steve Monroe
Evoking heartfelt memories of love and longing, sunshine, laughter and more, vocalist/guitarist John Pizzarelli's Stage & Screen delivers vibrant interpretations of classic songs from Broadway and Hollywood. The album provides not only nostalgia and hopeful vibes, but what amounts to orchestral artistry by Pizzarelli, pianist Isaiah J. Thompson and bassist Mike Karn as a bonus. Pizzarelli, a Grammy award winner and long an internationally acclaimed performer and entertainer, has been credited as being a prime interpreter of the Great American ...
read moreFred Hersch & Esperanza Spalding: Alive at the Village Vanguard
by John Chacona
Is it possible that we underestimate Esperanza Spalding? That would be quite a trick for an artist who has hardly been out of the spotlight since leapfrogging a couple of nobodies named Drake and Justin Bieber to take the Grammy award for Best New Artist in 2011. With a recent resume that includes a high-profile teaching position at Harvard (now ended), a collaboration with preeminent jazz composer Wayne Shorter on the opera “Iphigenia" and a fifth Grammy for 2022's Songwrights ...
read moreAnn Hampton Callaway: Fever: A Peggy Lee Celebration
by Richard J Salvucci
Peggy Lee was a remarkable singer and songwriter, but to some listeners, deeply enigmatic. Her time, often well behind the beat, conveyed a subtle sense of irony. “Are you getting this?" she sometimes seemed to say, “or am I going too fast for you?" She could be exuberant and world weary almost in the same breath. It was seemingly up to the audience to decipher her meaning. Lee could convey expectation and experience simultaneously, as in her version of “Folks ...
read moreBrian Landrus: Red List
by Jerome Wilson
Saxophonist Brian Landrus created this project with a purpose summed up in its subtitle, Music Dedicated to the Preservation of our Endangered Species. The album was made to create awareness about all the animal species on Earth in danger of extinction, thirteen of which are explicitly referenced here. For most of these, such as the Malayan tiger and the snow leopard, only a few hundreds or thousands are still alive. For the Javan rhino, there were only 67 left at ...
read moreFrank Kimbrough: Frank Kimbrough 2003 - 2006
by Pierre Giroux
Frank Kimbrough, who died in December 2020, was a pianist of passionate originality, whose playing can be defined by an ease of technique coupled with a flow of ideas and meticulous execution. This current release, Frank Kimbrough 2003-2006, features newly mixed and remastered versions of the pianist's 2003 album Lullabluebye and the 2006 follow-up release Play. These albums were thought to be representative of a particularly productive period in his career. On Lullabluebye, Kimbrough is accompanied ...
read moreFrank Kimbrough: Frank Kimbrough 2003 - 2006
by Dan McClenaghan
Pianist Frank Kimbrough (1956 -2020) was involved in a good deal of collaboration throughout his career, with the Herbie Nichols Project and, most notably, his twenty-four year, seven CD stint in the piano chair of the Maria Schneider Orchestra, where he elevated an already high altitude music to an even loftier level. Such was Kimbrough's willingness to give his all in sideman contexts with like-minded artists that it could be argued that his own work as a leader may not ...
read moreBrian Landrus: Red List
by Jack Bowers
No matter how one receives his music, there is no doubt that woodwind specialist Brian Landrus' heart is in the right place. Red List, his eleventh album as leader, is dedicated to the preservation of Earth's endangered animal species. Landrus names thirteen, at least five of which--the kakapo, Malayan tiger, gharial, vaquita and Javan rhino--are all but gone, with less than three hundred of each species remaining. In fact, it is estimated that only eight vaquitas (a species of porpoise ...
read moreFred Hersch: Breath By Breath
by John Chacona
Why is Fred Hersch not sufficiently mentioned among the great jazz pianists? It could be a generational thing. At 66, Hersch is an eminent tweener, too old to qualify as the Hot New Thing and too young to be an Elder Statesman. He's in good company there with fellow sexagenarians Myra Melford, Satoko Fujii, Uri Caine, Jean-Michel Pilc and Matthew Shipp. It's true that Hersch's contemporaries Geri Allen, Mulgrew Miller and Kenny Kirkland have entered the pantheon (and Frank Kimbrough ...
read moreFred Hersch: Breath By Breath
by Pierre Giroux
The intellectual and musical curiosity that inspires the work of pianist Fred Hersch is broad and deep. Validation of this is in his current release Breath By Breath which is informed by his early piano education and listening to string quartets, supported more recently by his advocacy of meditation as a way manage external factors beyond one's control. In the liner notes, Hersch encourages listeners to take the time to attend the eight-movement “Sati Suite" in ...
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