Jazz Articles
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The Lost Trio: Monkwork
by Dave Wayne
In the academic world, it's not unusual for someone to devote their scholarly energies to the study of a single, galvanizing individual and their life's work. Take Abraham Lincoln, for instance: the number of college professors and independent historians who've devoted their lives to thinking, speaking, and writing about Honest Abe is simply astounding. A similar phenomenon crops up in music, as well, and increasingly so in jazz; where just enough time has passed to reveal the true and lasting ...
read moreIndustrial Jazz Group: Leef
by Matthew Miller
It's hard to take anything about the Industrial Jazz Group for granted. Even the LA-based ensemble's name is misleading to the point that its leader, Andrew Durkin, feels the need to address it in the header of the group's website. “So we're not really industrial. Were The Beatles really insects?" As explanations go--humorous as they might be--it rings a little hollow. It does, however, speak volumes about IJG and its singular approach to music-making. Just when you think you've got ...
read moreMo'Fone: Sling Shot
by Ian Patterson
It must be challenging for Mo'Fone to secure gigs and, no doubt, many a venue refused them once the trio explained its lineup as two saxophones and drums. It's a setup sure to suggest an avant-garde trip or vaudeville novelty outing but the music on Sling Shot is, in fact, both tremendously listenable and serious.
While Jim Peterson's baritone sax anchors the trio, and he lets rip on occasion, most of the soloing is left to alto saxophonist/clarinetist Larry De ...
read moreIndustrial Jazz Group: LEEF
by Brad Glanden
It's difficult to fathom a universe where someone would not enjoy listening to LEEF. One would have to be conditioned, Clockwork Orange-style, into finding the sound of musical instruments morally reprehensible. There's nothing on the Industrial Jazz Group's album that couldn't be embraced wholeheartedly by someone with an otherwise unrepentant disdain for all things jazzy.
It's fitting that composer, pianist and band leader Andrew Durkin (whose PhD is in English Literature) admires the work of Donald ...
read moreTin/Bag: And Begin Again
by Troy Collins
And Begin Again documents an often overlooked side of a small group of up-and-coming bi-coastal improvisers. Los Angeles-based trumpeter Kris Tiner (Empty Cage Quartet) and New York- based guitarist Mike Baggetta deliver an attractive album of duets and quartet improvisations that resonate with a fragile harmonic maturity typically unheard in the work of such young, occasionally impetuous artists.
The duo's previous album There, Just As You Look For It (pfMentum, 2005) featured the duo working through texturally ambiguous ...
read moreIndustrial Jazz Group: Industrial Jazz A Go Go!
by Andrey Henkin
For those expecting to read about Ministry tunes played by full trumpet sections, stop right now. The Industrial Jazz Group has absolutely nothing to do with industrial music per se. I might posit that the adjective refers to an almost assembly line-like amalgamation of every known big band style into one mechagodzilla that destroys Tokyo. The Industrial Jazz Group was founded in 2000 by Andrew Durkin, a composer, pianist and occasional percussionist. This is the group's fourth ...
read moreIndustrial Jazz Group: Industrial Jazz A Go Go!
by Brad Glanden
Few categorical terms inspire as much trepidation among listeners as “avant-garde," and it is decidedly difficult to market music labeled as such. Even so, many artists on the fringe have tempered their envelope-pushing works with material that could be accused of having top-forty aspirations. It is rare indeed to discover someone capable of writing music that is both forward-thinking and accessible to virtually anyone; Industrial Jazz Group's Andrew Durkin is one such composer.
Now entering its seventh year, IJG is ...
read moreIndustrial Jazz Group: Industrial Jazz A Go Go!
by Rex Butters
Andrew Durkin and the Industrial Jazz Group release a circus of musical styles on Industrial Jazz A Go Go!, with soloists flying through fiery hoops, arrangements making death-defying leaps, and Durkin himself flooring the clown car. They cover so much musical material, sometimes within a single piece, that they threaten to appeal to everyone. Yet despite bringing doo-wop, R&B, rock, blues, classical, country, free improv and jazz into coherent collision, these are not Frankentunes. Durkin's arranging expertise creates such a ...
read moreCory Combs: Valencia
by Budd Kopman
Valencia is a trip through the eclectic mind of Cory Combs, a terrific bassist and a mean cellist. Combs and the other members of his trio, drummer John Hollenbeck (of the Claudia Quintet) and saxophonist Dan Willis, are all graduates of the Eastman School and have been playing together since then. Combs says that he wrote the pieces on Valencia with Hollenbeck and Willis in mind, and the sensitivity and cohesiveness of the group is impressive. The ...
read moreCory Combs featuring John Hollenbeck and Dan Willis: Valencia
by Phil DiPietro
Cory Combs featuring John Hollenbeck and Dan Willis Valencia Evander Music 2006
One of 2006's finest slices of modern jazz has been turned in by a high school music teacher! Cory Combs teaches in San Francisco's Mission District, at a school on Valencia Street, where he says we can see “every facet of life represented. He's a virtuoso practitioner of seven-stringed electric bass, on which he displays a deft touch and colossal ...
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