Jazz Articles
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Alex Wintz: LifeCycle
by Dan Bilawsky
Life cycles mark and determine how we develop, where we travel, and why we arrive and thrive in different places, figuratively and literally, at any given time. That's the point that guitarist Alex Wintz's music makes here, as this project takes its cues from the larger natural theme while growing specifically from his own personal and musical evolution of late. It's a work that couldn't be made at any other moment, as it specifically reflects Wintz as he is today, ...
read moreEtienne Charles: San José Suite
by Nigel Campbell
Whenever Trinidadian jazz trumpeter and composer Etienne Charles releases an album, it is an event. In this case, it is his latest opus, the ten-part San José Suite--soon to be performed live in Trinidad and Tobago for the first time on November 20. [The album was released in the US in June 2016 and debuted live at the San Jose Jazz Summer Fest in August 2016.] This suite dares to magnify the idea of the wider Americas as a crucible ...
read moreEtienne Charles: Creole Soul
by Nigel Campbell
With his simple declaration, “sound is my art...I just try to create," Trinidadian jazz trumpeter Etienne Charles puts into context his role of creator and producer in relation to his latest recording. This new album, previewed earlier this year in Tobago at Jazz on the Beach at Mt Irvine, reveals an evolution of his art that parallels the jazz idiom's most eclectic trumpeter and influence. The fourth studio album from this US-based musician and teacher bristles with a ...
read moreEtienne Charles: Kaiso
by Nicholas F. Mondello
With Kaiso, trumpeter Etienne Charles revisits his robust Trinidad-Tobago roots, brilliantly exposing their beauty, mystery and fascinating flavors. The fruits of Charles and crew's labor blossom from multiple Caribbean grooves into a highly energized performance, with more jazz-tinged interpretations than his prior outing, the highly acclaimed Folklore (Self-Produced, 2009). The title tune, from an African word loosely defined as “proceed" (as in “play on"), is dark and hard. With the frontline boiling hot over a pulsing harmonic ...
read moreEtienne Charles: Kaiso
by Dan Bilawsky
The names Aldwyn Roberts and Slinger Francisco might not ring a bell in jazz circles, but trumpeter Etienne Charles' Kaiso helps to rectify that issue. Charles pays tribute to these two giants of calypso music, better known respectively as Lord Kitchener and Mighty Sparrow, and explores the fusion of Caribbean music, Latin rhythms, the sounds of New Orleans, and modern jazz, throughout this ambitious program of music. While Charles may be guilty of trying to cover too ...
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