Results for "Ben Williams"

A Bu: Live At Beijing Poly Theater

by Karl Ackermann
July 13, 2020

Beijing's Poly Theater has held over three-thousand international artistic events since its opening in 1991. The prestigious fifteen-hundred seat cultural hub was the site of a 2018 solo piano concert by Dai Liang (aka, A Bu), possibly the best unknown pianist in music. A prodigy who began playing at four, the pianist was discovered in 2012 ...

Pat Metheny: From This Place

by John Kelman
February 14, 2020

It's been a full six years since Pat Metheny last released a studio recording. This, despite the guitarist who has become, in a career now in the midst of its fifth decade, one of the most famous and influential jazz guitarists of his (or, some would argue, any) generation, reportedly having enough material in the can ...

Ben Williams

Benjamin James Williams is a native of Washington, DC. He also performs on electric bass and piano as well. His musical influence is rooted in various genres of music including jazz, hip-hop, R&B, gospel, and classical. Ben is a recent graduate of the Michigan State University School of Music where he majored in Music Education with an emphasis in Jazz, studying with Rodney Whitaker and Jack Budrow. He plans to pursue a Master’s degree in Jazz Studies at the Juilliard School. Ben has won several competitions and scholarship awards. He is a two-time winner of the Fish Middleton Jazz Scholarship Competition at the East Coast Jazz Festival; a two-time winner of the DC Public School Piano Competition; a 2002 recipient of the Duke Ellington Society Annual Scholarship Award

2020 Winter JazzFest Marathons: A Survival Guide

by Ludovico Granvassu
January 7, 2020

Believe it or not, it is that time of the year again! The holidaze are barely over and a new edition of Winter JazzFest is upon us. Knowing a jazz marathon is the perfect antidote to the holiday shopping and social marathons, producer Brice Rosenbloom and his cohorts have put together a program of gargantuan proportions. ...

2019: The Year in Jazz

by Ken Franckling
January 2, 2020

The year 2019 was robust in many ways. International Jazz Day brought its biggest stage to Australia. An important but long-shuttered jazz mecca was revived in a coast-to-coast move. ECM Records celebrated a golden year. The music and its makers figured prominently on the big screen. The National Endowment for the Arts welcomed four new NEA ...

Love & Liberation

By Jazzmeia Horn

Label: Concord Jazz
Released: 2019
Track listing: Free Your Mind; Time; Out the Window; No More; When I Say; Legs and Arms; Searchin’; Green Eyes; Still Tryin’; Only You; Reflections of My Heart; I Thought About You.

Jazzmeia Horn: Love & Liberation

by Ian Patterson
September 13, 2019

It's a big step for any singer, the move from interpreter of jazz standards to songwriter. And when you've been Grammy-nominated for a debut album of covers, as Jazzmeia Horn was with A Social Call (Prestige, 2017), the temptation must be to carry on in the same vein. Horn, however, clearly has greater ambition, as the ...

Alicia Olatuja talks about her "Intuition"

by UDEiGWE
April 28, 2019

As an artist, Alicia Olatuja is distinguished by her graceful presence and her fine-tuned and soulful vocals. Her latest album, Intuition: Songs from the Minds of Women, is a collection of classic songs written by female composers. The album features David Rosenthal on guitar, Billy Childs on piano, Ulysses Owens Jr. on drums, Dayna Stephens on ...

Stefon Harris: Sonic Creed

by Angelo Leonardi
March 14, 2019

A distanza di un decennio dalla pubblicazione di Urbanus -l'ultimo disco di Stefon Harris con l'ensemble Blackout -sono cambiate molte cose nel mondo del vibrafono jazz: nel 2016 è scomparso Bobby Hutcherson, l'anno successivo Gary Burton s'è ritirato dalla scena attiva e Mike Mainieri, che ha superato gli ottant'anni, ha ridotto l'attività. Lo scettro del miglior ...

2018: The Year in Jazz

by Ken Franckling
January 3, 2019

The year 2018 was a busy one for the jazz world. The genre's version of the #MeToo movement resulted in a new Code of Conduct and other efforts to make the music workplace more equitable. International Jazz Day brought its biggest stage to St. Petersburg, Russia. The Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz, which ran a high-profile ...