Jazz Articles

Patti Wicks Trio: It's A Good Day

by C. Michael Bailey
March 16, 2008

It's A Good Day is pianist/vocalist Patti Wicks' follow-up to her 2007 The Italian Sessions and her 2005 Basic Feeling. On both of these recordings, Wicks employs the Italian rhythm section of bassist Giovanni Sanguineti and drummer Giovanni Guillino. If three times is a charm, then It's A Good Day has much to live up to.

Happily, this disc fares well in comparison to the two earlier releases. Wicks if found in very good voice, plunging her deep alto deeper ...

Harri Stojka Gipsysoul: Garude Apsa

by Robert R. Calder
January 21, 2006

Garude Apsa ("Hidden Tears") is a beautiful production by a serious Austrian jazz musician playing, as he insists, “not jazz." The music is of a sort which has influenced jazz, rather than been influenced by it. It has more go than some things you'll hear called gypsy jazz. “Garude Apsa/Reprise" also demonstrates what John Lewis' composition “Django" is all about: harmony. Especially in its Eastern origins, this Roma music shares a lot in common with the Great American Songbook, the ...

Harri Stojka: A Tribute to Swing

by Robert R. Calder
May 13, 2005

A Viennese gypsy jazz guitarist on the fiery side of numerous Europeans, Harri Stojka's musical great-grandfather was Django Reinhardt. He attacks tunes the way young lions did in the late 1940s, sounding a bit like the young Les Paul did when he still had a Django accent. On Charlie Shavers' “Undecided" (miscredited here to Waller) the original intricate line is preferred to the usual riffing paraphrase, and it becomes wonderfully jagged classic bop. The opening track explodes off ...