Home » Search Center » Results: C. Michael Bailey
Results for "C. Michael Bailey"
Veronica Swift: This Bitter Earth
by C. Michael Bailey
It seems jazz vocalist Veronica Swift has been in the music business all of her life, and for good reason: There is the well documented fact that she is the daughter of jazz pianist Hod O'Brien and singer Stephanie Nakasian, and she debuted on record at nine years old with Veronica's House of Jazz (SNOB, 2004). ...
Notable and Nearly Missed 2020
by C. Michael Bailey
The strange year that was 2020 yielded, reluctantly, re-issued and previously unissued recordings from across the spectrum of music and ain't it fine to have such to consider. The value of such recordings lay in their function in pointing to the musical future we presently inhabit. They fill in the blank spaces between then and now. ...
Roseanna Vitro: Listen Here
by C. Michael Bailey
Roseanna Vitro is a singer's singer in the same way as Sarah Vaughan and Carmen McRae. She is a studied practitioner of the jazz vocal arts, an interpreter, performer, educator. Her repertoire, taste, and vocal chops are beyond compare. Vitro's ability has evolved horizontally and vertically over 14 recordings and nearly 40 years. The singer's most ...
Tómas R. Einarsson: Latínball í Búðardal
by C. Michael Bailey
If jazz can be considered America's gift to the world—a music genre proven absorbent of local influences and capable of being recreated with every performance in every climate—then the brand of Latin jazz of Icelandic bassist Tómas R. Einarsson can be considered an extension of that same gift, second generation and once removed. Iceland, climatically and ...
Harry Allen: Tenor Saxophone In The Time of COVID
by C. Michael Bailey
The COVID-19 pandemic has given rise to any number of keen improvisations, each manifesting from the necessity of having to “quarantine in place." Tenor saxophonist Harry Allen, the “Frank Sinatra" of his instrument, thinks way outside the box—recording within the friendly confines of his own living room, while under health crisis house arrest. Good for you, ...
Marty Elkins: 'Tis Autumn
by C. Michael Bailey
There exists a group of jazz musicians dedicated to pre-bebop jazz who have traditionally populated the catalogs of the Nagel-Heyer and Arbors record labels. These musicians include Herb Pomeroy, Max Kaminsky, Randy Sandke, Harry Allen, and Dave McKenna. Central to this group is vocalist Marty Elkins who, while in college, discovered the recordings of Ella Fitzgerald, ...
C. Michael Bailey's Best Releases of 2020
by C. Michael Bailey
We are experiencing an existential fold in history, one where we do not even realize its gravity because it has been so cheapened by ourselves. The only thing that rises above all of this is art, and in particular, music. It is but grace that these artists provided us a gift we could never possibly warrant. ...
Gemma Sherry: Let's Get Serious
by C. Michael Bailey
A perfect response to challenge and change. In the parlance of the agrarian American South, Gemma Sherry is “makin' hay while the sun shines. Let's Get Serious is the singer's light-as-air, coquettishly coy wink at the COVID-19 pandemic—a wink as opposed to any other response, as Sherry is a true Lady. The title of ...
Louise Alexandra: Today
by C. Michael Bailey
From Destiny to Today ... Vocalist and composer Louise Alexandra's Today requires a bit of unpacking. In 2012, a wunderkind polymath named Louise van Aarsen released a debut recording, Destiny receiving positive critical attention. Known as Dr. Louise Koopman in her day job as Sr. Research Scientist at Dana Farber Cancer Institute and in ...
Steve Masakowski and the Masakowski Family: Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas
by C. Michael Bailey
Holiday Music...with an edge. The holiday season always provides plenty of inspiration for musicians. Jazzers are especially affected, having produced many notable records, beginning, with the Vince Guaraldi trio's A Charlie Brown Christmas (Fantasy, 1965). That recording provides a convenient jumping off point for discussing the Masakowski Family's Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas, ...
