Results for "Chris May"
Dan Wilson: Vessels Of Wood And Earth
by Chris May
Dan Wilson's Vessels Of Wood And Earth starts well. Just over a minute into track one, the guitarist launches into a lightning-speed solo which sounds a little like Wes Montgomery channeling Charlie Parker on speed. On track two, Stevie Wonder's well named “Bird Of Beauty," he rings the changes, exchanging Montgomery and Parker for Pat Metheny ...
John Coltrane: An Alternative Top Ten Albums
by Chris May
Miles Davis once said that you could recite the history of jazz in just four words: Louis Armstrong, Charlie Parker. To that you need to add two more: John Coltrane. A giant during his lifetime, Coltrane continues to shape jazz and inspire musicians decades after he passed. No other player has come remotely close to eclipsing ...
Kurt Edelhagen & His Orchestra: The Unreleased WDR Jazz Recordings 1957 - 1974
by Chris May
This 3xCD collection of recordings by Kurt Edelhagen & His Orchestra is culled from over three thousand individual tracks recorded under the auspices of Cologne, Germany radio station WDR over close on twenty years. It is, as the expression goes, a curate's egg. That is to say, parts of it are excellent and parts of it ...
Tubby Hayes: Free Flight
by Chris May
Tenor saxophonist, flautist, vibraphonist and composer Tubby Hayes, who died at the unconscionably young age of thirty-eight in 1973, was that rare thing among the first generation of British jazz musicians in the 1960s—a player who was taken seriously by the hippest American musicians and audiences. He visited New York in 1961 and 1964 for well-received ...
Garage A Trois: Calm Down Cologne
by Chris May
Formed by guitarist Charlie Hunter, saxophonist Skerik and drummer Stanton Moore in 1999, Garage A Trois has sparked a slew of “But is it jazz?" debates with every new release. Calm Down Cologne will do it again. GAT has been through various incarnations since its debut EP, The Mysteryfunk (Fog City Records, 1999), necessitated ...
Whatitdo Archive Group: The Black Stone Affair
by Chris May
Great music recorded in the 1960s and 1970s, never previously released and thought to be lost forever, continues to be unearthed. In 2018, there was John Coltrane's Both Directions At Once: The Lost Album (Impulse!). In 2019, there was Miles Davis' Rubberband (Warner Bros). Now, in 2021, comes another historic discovery: the long-lost soundtrack of visionary ...
Sam Newbould: Bogus Notus
by Chris May
Sam Newbould is a British-born alto saxophonist and composer who has since 2016 been based in Amsterdam, where he leads the Sam Newbould Quintet. The group debuted on record with the self-produced Blencathra in 2019. Bogus Notus is the follow-up. The album is a substantial piece of work, a collection of eight originals which, ...
Eddie Sauter: A Wider Focus
by Chris May
For many people, composer and arranger Eddie Sauter's reputation begins and ends with Stan Getz's Focus (Verve, 1962). The album is, indeed, a masterpiece. But it is only one of the pinnacles of Sauter's career, which started during the swing era. Nor is Focus Sauter's only collaboration with Getz. The partnership continued with the less widely ...
Raul Gutierrez And His Cuban Big Band: Prado... Vive!
by Chris May
At the start of the 1950s, Cuban bandleader Pérez Prado, the subject of this tribute album, led the hottest big band in Cuba. By the end of the decade, he had been crowned the King of Mambo by the Latin American diaspora in New York City, too, and his cameo appearances in Hollywood movies had helped ...
Damon Locks Black Monument Ensemble: Now
by Chris May
Chicago-based collective Black Monument Ensemble's sophomore album was recorded in September 2020 at the intersection of various existential crises, as seen from a US perspective: the threat of Trump winning the presidential election, by fair means or foul; the rising tide of fascist ideology; extrajudicial murders of, in particular but not exclusively, black Americans; a galloping ...
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