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News: Recording

Shawn Bell and His Hard-Bopping Bone: "Things yet Unknown"

March 1, 2011

You don't need to be re-told this, but it is OK to revisit an historically older style if you are sincere, dedicated to it, have something to say in its idiom and do it convincingly. That would pretty much sum up Shawn Bell [on his recent Things Yet Unknown (self-released) album], his trombone, his compositions, his ...

News: Recording

Eastern Boundary Quartet Melds Amerfree Improv with Hungarian Strains

March 1, 2011

The Eastern Boundary Quartet joins a freely inspired Michael Jeffry Stevens on piano and Joe Fonda on bass with two Hungarian practitioners of the jazz arts: Mihaly Borbely on sax and tarogato; Balazs Bagyi on the drums. The group recorded Icicles (Konnex 5258) in Budapest at the end of 2009 and it is a widely encompassing ...

News: Recording

Mac Gollehon's "Straight Ahead" Virtual Big Band

March 1, 2011

Trumpeter-trombonist-arranger Mac Gollehon has done something that is far from easy to pull off. He's created big band charts and then realized all the trumpet and trombone parts by overdubbing (except for the bass trombone, which is in the capable hands of Sam Burtis). He's then fleshed out the rest of the group with some notably ...

News: Recording

Christopher Campbell, Sound the All-Clear

March 1, 2011

Composer Christopher Campbell and six other musicians do something on Sound the All Clear (Innova 750) that, while not being brand-spanking-new in concept, is done very musically and convincingly. They create 12 vignettes, some short, some in the ten-minute range, that use a variety of instruments to create a sound that incorporates world and home-made elements ...

News: Recording

Luther Thomas's Probingly Incisive Alto in a Good Setting

March 1, 2011

There are a number of the late Luther Thomas's recordings on Ayler records. One of the very best is the download digital release of Finally! Total Unity in 3 Phases (aylDL-041). It's a 2006 quartet date that brings some lucid Thomas alto sax within the context of the ubiquitous Jeffry Hayden Shurdut on guitar and drums, ...

News: Recording

Ursel Schlicht and Reuben Radding: Einstein's Dreams

March 1, 2011

Ursel Schlicht, pianist, composer, educator, we have seen via a number of postings here and on the guitar site; bassist Reuben Radding should also be no stranger to regular readers of my blogs. They both in their own way have strongly original approaches to improvisation, which their CD collaboration Einstein's Dreams (Konnex 5165) well attests. This ...

News: Recording

Esther Lamneck, Tarogato; Roberto Fabbriciani, Hyperbass Flute

March 1, 2011

Not everything musically is what you expect. So sometimes you come to expect the unexpected. And in the case of Winds of the Heart, the album of tarogato and hyperbass flute duets by Esther Lamneck and Roberto Fabbriciani (Innova 239), you most certainly get it. First let me just clarify that the tarogato is related to ...

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News: Recording

Markus Reuter's "Todmorden 513:" Algorithmic Poetics

March 1, 2011

Markus Reuter has created an hour-long piece for ten players based on the algorithmic trans- formation, extension and reordering of musical material. He calls the work Todmorden 513. That the work is the product of some sophisticated methodological approaches is not uninteresting. But I've stayed away from that at this point to concentrate on a deep ...

News: Performance / Tour

The Microscopic Septet Play Monk

March 1, 2011

As time goes by it becomes more and more clear that the music of Thelonious Monk has become a backbone of the jazz repertoire. At one time there was a great deal of lip service about his genius but not all that many covers. The more we go on in time, the less that is true. ...

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News: Website

The George Shearing Quintet: All About Jazz Playlist

March 1, 2011

All About Jazz's My iTunes Playlists are designed to help music lovers compile their own “best of" iPod playlists or CDR compilations. Here is the playlist I constructed to help introduce new listeners to what I consider to be the best of the classic George Shearing Quintet's best available recordings. The great pianist George Shearing (1919-2011) ...