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Mort Weiss: Mort Weiss is a Jazz Reality Show
by Dan Bilawsky
In recent years, life has thrown one obstacle after another at the feet of octogenarian clarinetist Mort Weiss. Divorce, loss of home, cancer, and hospitalization for a variety of other life-threatening ailments all came at him, threatening to kill his resolve and cut him down. But it would seem that practically nothing is capable of felling this forthright man and fine clarinetist. This album gives ample proof that there's a lot of musical life left in Mort Weiss.
read moreMort Weiss: Mort Weiss is a Jazz Reality Show
by C. Michael Bailey
The informal definition of a Character is an odd, eccentric, or unusual person." That is a bit disappointing in that odd, eccentric, and unusual" more often than not may be pejorative. I prefer a unique, memorable, or exceptional person." That said, it takes all six adjectives to adequately describe clarinetist Mort Weiss, who with this recording makes me eat a whole crow soufflé considering I was tempted to take him at his word that his last release, A Giant Step ...
read moreMort Weiss: A Giant Step Out and Back
by Sammy Stein
A while back, flamboyant and forthright clarinetist Mort Weiss sent an email saying he was going to make a free form album. Frankly, it was hard to believe as no-one had been more against free form jazz than Weiss. For around two years he had been taking free form apart, decrying many players and the genre, implying it was, Emperor's New Clothes" or worse, and now, finally, had he really come round to liking it and even performing free form? ...
read moreMort Weiss: I'll Be Seeing You
by C. Michael Bailey
Clarinetist Mort Weiss is a character. That much is readily evident by reading his All About Jazz column, The Mort Report. He is opinionated and passionate, both driving forces that easily season his playing in such a way that when Weiss plays, he's readily recognizable. Since returning to recording in 2001 after nearly 30 years away, Weiss has recorded a number of well-received CDs bringing him to what he considers his most fully realized release, I'll Be Seeing You.
read moreMort Weiss: Mort Weiss Meets Bill Cunliffe
by C. Michael Bailey
If it is a Mort Weiss recording, bebop cannot be very far away. Competent bop clarinetists are as scarce as hen's teeth, the most critically accepted being Tony Scott, Buddy Defranco and Weiss. Weiss' most recent recordings, Mort Weiss Meets Sam Most (SMS Jazz, 2006) and B3 and Me (SMS Jazz, 2006), reflect his solid bop reverence. Weiss' Mort Weiss Meets Bill Cunliffe brings the clarinetist into orbit with pianist Bill Cunliffe, another jazz musician sympathetic to ...
read moreMort Weiss: Raising the Bar: The Definitive Mort Weiss
by Samuel Chell
In late 2006, clarinetist Mort Weiss told his unusual story to R. J. Deluke in an exclusive interview for All About Jazz, appropriated titled Mort Weiss: Sets Sail with Clarinet." His narrative is the timeless, archetypal journey of the hero's circular route to hell and back--much like that of Homer's legendary mariner, Ulysses, except that in Weiss' case, the outcome was far from known. With Raising the Bar, Weiss completes his journey, and provides impressive if less than definitive closure ...
read moreMort Weiss: All Too Soon - A Jazz Duet For Clarinet and Seven String Guitar
by Samuel Chell
Mort Weiss All Too Soon: A Jazz Duet for Clarinet and Seven String Guitar SMS Jazz 2008
Not the least of this album's attractions is the title. To those few listeners familiar with the tune, All Too Soon" might summon up one of Duke Ellington's more obscure compositions, were it included in the disc's playlist of no fewer than a dozen jazz classics." Or it could be a reminder of the irreparable loss to ...
read moreMort Weiss: The B3 and Me
by Robert R. Calder
Mort Weiss turned 71 last year. Records from sixty, fifty, forty years back, of anybody playing clarinet as he does now, would have been equally noteworthy with this second CD, even without the novelty of also featuring a Hammond B3 player (far less the man Weiss isn't alone in calling the Hammond B3 player). This may be the only clarinet/organ/guitar quartet on disc, but there were never that many more major bebop clarinetists. Discord is mentioned in ...
read moreThe Mort Weiss Quartet: Mort Weiss Meets Joey DeFrancesco
by Samuel Chell
"OK, let's just do it." The B3 player riffs on a dominant 7th sus chord; the soloist, eager to get it on, makes an entrance four measures into the organist's eight-bar intro, then waits four more bars before beginning the resilient There Will Never Be Another You." The organ drops out a measure ahead of the first ride" chorus, re-entering with a bass-note bomb anticipating the second beat of the chorus with enough force to propel soloist and listener alike ...
read moreMort Weiss: The B3 And Me
by Samuel Chell
Mort Weiss The B3 And Me SMS Jazz 2006
Although the temptation to retitle this session Bambi Meets Godzilla is a powerful one, the encounter is neither a laughing matter nor a foregone conclusion. Mort Weiss is the Rip Van Winkle of jazz, a musician who dropped out of the scene and ignored his clarinet for forty years before making an incredible, possibly unprecedented, recent comeback.
Small wonder then that Weiss's tone and melodic ...
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