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Results for "Billy Strayhorn"
Roberto Magris Trio: Kansas City Outbound
by Dan McClenaghan
Italian pianist Roberto Magris has, much in the mode of American piano icon Jessica Williams, melded multiple influences to shape his style. He channels McCoy Tyner, John Coltrane's pianist in his 1960's rise to jazz stardom, on Kansas City Outbound's opener/title tune. Dense chords and a powerful percussive attack are the well-executed game plan for the ...
Fred Hersch: No Limits
by Maxwell Chandler
From the start of his career as a sideman in the 1970s for such jazz luminaries as Joe Henderson, Art Farmer and Stan Getz to his own ensembles and solo projects, there has always been a great diversity and intensity to Fred Hersch's art. Having won a Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship for composition (2003) and having been ...
Jazz Vocalist Sylvia Brooks to Bring the Glamour Back with Debut CD Release "Dangerous Liaisons"
"If you’ve never heard her perform, you’re missing one of the Southland’s great talents" --Gorgeous Magazine LOS ANGELES, CA. Singer and actor Sylvia Brooks is set to thrill listeners with the release of Dangerous Liaisons, her debut full-length CD featuring a collection of songs that stretches from the palm-lined causeway connecting Miami to Palm Island and ...
Roy Hargrove: Emergence
by Robert J. Robbins
As a trumpeter, composer, and an arranger, Roy Hargrove has been a mainstay of the contemporary music scene in a variety of formats for nearly two decades. Nevertheless, his big band experience has been limited mostly to his appearances with the Dizzy Gillespie All-Star Big Band, with which he has most ably proved himself an heir ...
Gary Smulyan: Low Man Aims High
by Edward Bride
A baritone saxophonist who plays like Bird? And harvests more than a half-dozen Grammy awards in the process? That seeming contradiction characterizes the great successes of Gary Smulyan, one of today's most in-demand jazz performers, educators, and recording artists. To be fair, Smulyan has his own voice, but he cites Charlie Parker ...
John Surman: From Boy Choirs to Big Horns
by John Kelman
It's increasingly risky to be a musician on the road. When British saxophonist John Surman was traveling from his home in Oslo, Norway, to New York City in September, 2007 for a recording session, he almost lost his baritone saxophone to the airlines. It is a nightmare traveling now," says Surman, and hardly a tour goes ...
Jacksonville: Big City, Big Band, Big Plans
by Jack Bowers
Almost everyone who's even mildly interested knows that the big band scene in the US isn't what it used to be. On the other hand, the big bands aren't yet dead, as some alarmists have claimed, or even on life support. Thanks in part to college and armed services programs, there are perhaps as many or ...
Bob Florence Limited Edition / Dizzy Gillespie All-Star Big Band / Dana Legg Stage Band / John Burnett Swing Orchestra
by Jack Bowers
Bob Florence Limited Edition Legendary MAMA 2009 Legendary" is a word that is often misused and shamelessly over-used, and in this case entirely appropriate. Even though composer / arranger / pianist Bob Florence is no longer with us, and wasn't in the studio when his Limited Edition recorded ...
John Surman: Brewster's Rooster
by John Kelman
After a string of more jazz-centric ECM releases--1992's relatively free Adventure Playground, the large ensemble of 1993's The Brass Project, and the only document of his ongoing quartet with pianist John Taylor, bassist Chris Laurence and drummer John Marshall, 1994's Stranger Than Fiction--saxophonist John Surman's subsequent output for the label has consisted of unorthodox but no ...
Frank Wess Nonet: Once Is Not Enough
by Edward Blanco
Known affectionately as Magic" to his professional colleagues, saxophonist/flautist Frank Wess is a living legend in the jazz world. His résumé includes stints with Billy Eckstine, the Clark Terry Big Band and a decade performing with the Count Basie Orchestra, and he is recognized as one of the first major flautists to have an impact on ...


