Results for "Andrew Hill"

Andrew Hill

Over nearly half a century, composer-pianist-ensemble leader Andrew Hill gained international jazz renown for his uniquely original music and recorded ouevre, which is by turns dark, fragile, funny, stark, unforgettably tuneful, percussive, insightful, oblique, transparent and mysterious. With the release of Dusk (Palmetto Records), his first album in ten years, Hill reaches another peak, equaling high points of composition and collaboration he achieved in the 1960s with such innovators as Eric Dolphy, Kenny Dorham, John Gilmore, Roy Haynes, Joe Henderson, Bobby Hutcherson, Elvin Jones, Sam Rivers, Tony Williams and Reggie Workman, most often commissioned by Blue Note Records. A folio of songs for sextet loosely inspired by Cane, Jean Toomer's classic volume of stories and poems published during the Harlem Renaissance, Dusk features Hill's New Point of Departure Sextet of virtuosi and the mature vision of an artist who has always flourished just beyond fame's spotlight, the better to see, hear, feel and create without its insistent glare

The Volcanic World Of Pyroclastic Records

By MARK CORROTO

As listeners we so often typecast musicians and music labels. Artists are pigeonholed into silos: classical, jazz, rock, blues, pop, etc.. Go into any record store (if you can find a brick & mortar one) and this segregation, a forced separation, is also evident. Even streaming services are divided in this manner. Maybe it is just ...

Michael Cuscuna: In The Vault Playing God

By AAJ STAFF

From the 1995-2003 archive: This article first appeared at All About Jazz in December 2000. Michael Cuscuna is one of the most important figures in the jazz reissue field today. He has been responsible for hundreds of releases for many companies, and he was fortunate to meet and befriend Alfred Lion during the final ...

Two From The Pyroclastic Label: Cory Smythe & Eric Revis

By JEROME WILSON

The Pyroclastic label run by pianist Kris Davis received a lot of attention last year due to the critical acclaim given Davis' own album on the label, Diatom Ribbons. It has kept going this year, continuing to present challenging projects by forward thinking musicians. Here are a couple of them. Cory Smythe

A focus on Charles Tolliver

By BOB OSBORNE

Connect is the first release from trumpeter Charles Tolliver in over a decade. The new album finds him in fine form and good company. With a recording career which began in the mid-1960s, and an impressive, albeit relatively small, back catalogue he is possibly one of the great unsung trumpeters in jazz. The show includes music ...

Muse Records: Ten Smoking Hot Albums

By CHRIS MAY

Alone among the other great jazz labels of the 1960s and 1970s—Blue Note, Prestige, Riverside, Impulse!, Strata-East and Atlantic—Joe Fields' Muse is rarely anthologised, written about or otherwise celebrated. Yet like its peers, Muse was prolific, releasing over 200 premium-grade albums during the 1970s, its most active decade, alone. This relative obscurity is ...

Blue Note Records: Lost In Space: 20 Overlooked Classic Albums

By CHRIS MAY

For anyone with a passion for Blue Note, it is hard to conceive of an album that has been “overlooked," let alone twenty of them. For connoisseurs of the most influential label in jazz history, the passion can be all consuming: if a dedicated collector does not have all the albums (yet), he or she will ...

Falkner Evans: Marbles

By JEROME WILSON

Pianist Falkner Evans has been gradually expanding the size of his recording projects. He started out with a couple of trio discs, then made one with a quintet. On this latest offering, he fronts a three-horn sextet scored to sound like a bigger and fuller unit. He uses a front line of Michael Blake ...

A Shelly Manne Centennial and More June Birthdays

By MARC COHN

June birthdays on Gifts and Messages. The 'big' ones: singer Dakota Staton @ 90 and drummer Shelly Manne @ 100. It's also Anthony Braxton's 75th birthday with tunes from his Charlie Parker Project. On our broadcast day in Baton Rouge, Eric Dolphy's 92nd. More of course, mostly pianists: Chick Corea, Kenny Barron, Geri Allen, Misha Mengelberg ...