Results for "AAJ Staff"

Ronnie Cuber on Maynard (PT. 1)

September 1, 2011

Ronnie Cuber is a baritone saxophonist with a beefy sound who came up through the big bands of the 1960s. During this problematic big band era, rock and soul put the squeeze on orchestras' abilities to earn a profit. Yet top-name leaders still managed to tour and record, in many cases by arranging rock and soul ...

Okkyung Lee - Noisy Love Songs (Tzadik, 2011) ****

September 1, 2011

Korean cellist Okkyung Lee is one of those musicians who is not only comfortable in any genre—modern jazz, rock or classical—but in her own compositions she even goes beyond genres, not blending them, but defying them. The musicians who accompany her on this album attest to that: Cornelius Dufallo on violin, Peter Evans on trumpet, Craig ...

Bela Fleck: World Premiere of Concerto for Banjo and Orchestra

September 1, 2011

NEW WORK DEDICATED TO EARL SCRUGGS Bela Fleck will present the world premiere of his Concerto for Banjo and Orchestra— one of the first ever written for the instrument—with the Nashville Symphony on September 22-24 at Schermerhorn Symphony Center. To be performed by Fleck on his vintage 1937 mahogany Gibson Mastertone banjo, the Concerto marks a ...

Ad Watch: Willie Nelson Covers Coldplay's "Scientist" for Chipotle Ad [video]

September 1, 2011

Willie Nelson and Chiplote have joined forces for a wonderful animated ad designed to make us think more about what we're putting in our mouth comes from. Nelson has been fighting for family farms and against factory farming for many years, but who knew that Chipolte has been doing their part as well. The fast food ...

One of Music's Last Holdouts Putumayo Goes Digital

September 1, 2011

One of the last holdouts, Putumayo has finally made its music available via digital download. “I've built a business focused on creating compelling physical packages that combine music, culture and travel, that make great gifts and that sound very good," label founder Dan Storper told the New York Times. Putumayo's colorfully decorated, compilations, like “Acoustic Brazil" ...

Madeleine Peyroux Performing at Berklee Performance Center in Boston on Friday, October 7

September 1, 2011

George Lernis Jazz Quartet - Shapes of Nature (2011)

September 1, 2011

An ambitious debut featuring seven original titles, George Lernis' Shapes of Nature is a great new example of how Tony Williams' legacy continues to play out in jazz. The former Miles Davis band prodigy spent his career exploring the rhythmic complexities first hinted at by bebop, and that journey continues here. Lernis, a Cyprus-born and Boston-based ...

Andrew Sterman's Album "Wet Paint:" Tenor and Ensemble in a Post-Trane Present

September 1, 2011

Tenor jazzman Andrew Sterman, judging from his pleasingly melifluous album Wet Paint (Innova 771), works out of a post-Coltrane, Ornette-Coleman-via-Dewey-Redman, Jan Garbarek (more in the lower register though) inspiration to a music that is well balanced, lyrical and a leap into a place within that stylistic world. This has a sort of ECM-extroverted feel to it. ...

Hee Haw! It's Handel!

September 1, 2011

This blog is not really about jazz but about a project that likely would appeal to jazz fans and musicians because it is so... well...renegade. And it is all about music, community and creativity, which makes it very much in the same universe as jazz, right? Last Sunday I enjoyed my first Mixed Precipitation event. No, ...

Want to Play at Jazz Fest? Here's Your Chance!

August 31, 2011