Jazz Articles
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Ryuichi Sakamoto: async Remodels
by Nenad Georgievski
There is a legend about the vigorous dance of Shiva, the Hindu god of destruction and creative renewal. This endless and vigorous dance is called Tandava," and with it Shiva destroys the world. With each new cycle, out of the scattered elements, a new world is reconstructed. This dance and act is the source of the cycle of creation, preservation, and dissolution. In a similar manner, what most remixers have been doing to songs or pieces of music can be ...
read moreMark Orton: Nebraska
by Mark F. Turner
Even without seeing director Alexander Payne's critically acclaimed motion picture Nebraska, the soundtrack evokes a sense of poignant storytelling, motion, and depth. Multi-instrumentalist and film scorer Mark Orton vividly captures the essence of the film's story about a belligerent old man--performed by Bruce Dern who earned Best Actor" for the role at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival--who is relentlessly determined to collect, in person by the way, the unlikely one million dollar sweepstakes prize he is convinced he's won.
read moreBruno Evin / Djamel Hammadi / Julio Black: Man Ray Volume 1
by Aaron Basiliere
Man Ray Volume 1 finds Bruno Evin, Djamel Hammadi, and Julio Black, three of Europe's most prolific DJs, taking acid jazz, ambient and electronica to new heights with a flawless mix of influential music that spans the globe. With an arsenal of differentiated rhythms and harmonies that cut across cultures, Ervin, Hammadi and Black showcase some of the most groundbreaking acts on the world-dance circuit, and produce a set of new-age chill-out standards that proves to be infectious and groovy ...
read moreRichard Galliano: Love Day: Los Angeles Sessions
by Jakob Baekgaard
The beauty of music is in its ability to compress. A whole lifetime of emotions can be contained in a song. Music, in a way, is the most abstract way of speaking and yet it is also the most direct utterance one can think of. The same can be said of love. Love and music transcend time while still being situated in history. Love that's here today can be gone tomorrow.
Richard Galliano's Love Day can be heard ...
read moreRichard Galliano / Brussels Jazz Orchestra: Ten Years Ago
by Chris May
An energetic recording artist who since 2007 has been averaging three albums a year, accordionist Richard Galliano appears even more prolific because of the quick-fire diversity of contexts in which he places himself--solo, with his Tangaria quartet, with European and American jazz groups ranging from duos to larger lineups, and with strings. Between them, Galliano's albums have embraced tango, jazz, chanson and the classics. In a long career as leader however, he has never recorded with a big band--until now ...
read moreRichard Galliano: Love Day: Los Angeles Sessions
by Chris May
French-Italian accordionist Richard Galliano began recording for the Milan label in the mid-2000s, since when he's released two tango-based albums, Luz Negra (Milan, 2007) and Live In Marciac (Milan, 2007), made with his Tangaria Quartet. Galliano's Love Day: Los Angeles Session finds him returning to another love, new musette, a jazz-inflected recalibration of the bal-musette cafe music developed by French and Italian musicians in late 19th century Paris.Love Day: Los Angeles Sessions is bal-musette with a further twist ...
read moreRichard Galliano & Tangaria Quartet: Live In Marciac 2006
by Chris May
Accordionist Richard Galliano's Tangaria Quartet made its studio debut earlier this year with the thrilling Luz Negra (Milan Records, 2007), recorded in Brazil. The group's warm-up gig for those sessions happened a month earlier, in August 2006, at France's Marciac Festival, and, happily, the performance was recorded.
Like the studio set, Live In Marciac 2006 is a fiery, foot-on-the-accelerator mix of valse musettes, straight-ahead jazz, tunes derived from European and South American folk songs, a handful of tangos ...
read moreRichard Galliano: Luz Negra
by Chris May
A little accordion can go a long way. The instrument's blowsy, wheezing sound, perfectly fashioned to express sadness and tears, can quickly become a downer, and it takes a player with unusual gifts to transcend all that. It is no accident that two styles intimately associated with the accordion, Argentinian tango and French musette, frequently deal with loss and bad luck. Je ne regrette rien? I don't think so.
Richard Galliano has recorded several tristesse fests in his time, but ...
read moreFlags of Our Fathers: Various Artists
by Jack Bowers
I don't ordinarily review film scores, but the patriotic epic Flags of Our Fathers, about the raising of the American flag on Iwo Jima and the memorable photograph that changed the mood and momentum of World War II, has a jazz/swing pedigree of sorts with music by jazz aficionado Clint Eastwood, orchestrations by conductor Lennie Niehaus, recreations of songs from the era by Michael Stevens and Clint's son, bassist Kyle Eastwood, and one jazz classic, Summit Ridge Drive, by Artie ...
read moreVarious Artists: Flags of Our Fathers
by Jim Santella
Clint Eastwood has put together a soundtrack to match the heart-grabbing film Flags of Our Fathers. With this release of music from the motion picture, we are able to relive the action and the emotion through the film's score.
Eastwood composed much of the music. Lennie Niehaus conducts a studio orchestra that delivers, and portions of the soundtrack come from other directions. As with all film scoring, Eastwood's design is to make the music fit the scene. Hence, ...
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