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Kenny Drew and His Progressive Piano
by C. Michael Bailey
As a commercial release, the 12-inch LP Kenny Drew and His Progressive Piano has a curious history. It was also released under the title The Modernity of Kenny Drew and contained music from two recording sessions, one held in New York City In 1953 and the second in Los Angeles in 1954. Some of the sides ...
Sonny's Crib
by C. Michael Bailey
From the outset, pianist Sonny Clark's sophomore effort as a leader is crisp, white-hot hard bop. Leading a standard bop trumpet-tenor saxophone quintet (Donald Byrd, John Coltrane), supplemented with trombone (Curtis Fuller), Clark and his most reliable rhythm section of bassist Paul Chambers and drummer Art Taylor carve five dictionary examples (with alternate takes on the ...
Emilia Vancini: And If You Fall, You Fall
by C. Michael Bailey
There is a post-modern, deconstructive spirit in music existing within the anabolic-catabolic dichotomy of composition and performance. This spirit manifests in the same impetus that compels inquisitive minds to take things apart and put them back together differently, if not improving them, then revealing, from a different cleave, some previously unseen aspect of the whole. A ...
Gemma Sherry: Gemma Sherry Sings Bossa Nova
by C. Michael Bailey
Gemma Sherry's Songs I Love (Tunley Records, 2020) is not yet a year old, and now she releases an extended-play collection of five tried and true Bossa Nova pieces, that like Songs I Love, did not require one more run-through, save for Sherry's exquisitely well-balanced voice and her rock solid accompaniment who supported the singer previously ...
Diane Schuur: Running on Faith
by C. Michael Bailey
Pianist and vocalist Diane “Deedles" Schuur and Wessell “Warmdaddy" Anderson may be the last jazz artists to have musically-anointed monikers, from a genre replete with them (Lester “Prez" Young, Billie “Lady Day" Holiday, Johnny “Rabbit" Hodges, Julian “Cannonball" Adderley and “John Birks “Dizzy" Gillespie). Schuur was named “Deedles" as a child by her mother. The name ...
Louise Cappi: Mélange
by C. Michael Bailey
Vocalist Louise Cappi's recording Mélange is a musical collection of short stories, each cast as uniquely and differently as if they were written by a Mario Vargas Llosa or Gabriel García Márquez. Each selection is carefully curated, right down to the production, to achieve a given end. The title is apt as each of these songs ...
Lajos Dudas: The Lake and the Music
by C. Michael Bailey
At 80-years old, clarinetist Lajos Dudas is dropping off the keys to the recording studio while making his way out—Dudas claims this is his last recording and, if true, he ends things on a high note at the intersection of The Great American Songbook and free jazz. Dudas' previous recording, Return to the Future (Jazzsick Records, ...
New Faces - New Sounds
by C. Michael Bailey
Jazz is littered with musicians like Elmo Hope: young, talented and, ultimately, doomed because of racism, poverty, and chemical dependency. Born in New York City, the son of immigrants from the Caribbean, Hope managed to release more than a baker's dozen of studio recordings in as many years, before dying of drug addiction-related health problems in ...
Dial "S" for Sonny
by C. Michael Bailey
Pianist Sonny Clark was culturally marginalized in much the same way as his contemporary Elmo Hope—both heroin-addicted jazz musicians in the 1950s: at the time, and romantically, a cliche. Both pianists have been sorely lumped into the “Bud Powell school of bop piano" which superficially may seem accurate until one considers the evolutionary continuum of jazz ...
Svetlana Shmulyian: Night at the Movies
by C. Michael Bailey
Russian-American singer Svetlana Shmulyian has blended an East Europe/Russia combination of elegant determination and delicate grit into the American Songbook on her debut recording Night at the Speakeasy (AO2 Records, 2016), and then film music on Night at the Movies (Starr Records, 2020). The artist surprised listeners by dropping an outtake from Night at the Movies, ...
