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Deborah Shulman: My Heart's In The Wind
by Dan Bilawsky
My Heart's In The Wind is a modest and muted affair, understated in nature yet emotionally stirring in its own way. It's a collection of music that speaks directly to intimacy, loss, and the bends in life's road. The eleven tracks presented on this quiet beauty tap into a variety of emotions, with love, sadness, mourning, ...
MCG Jazz does Christmas: New Holiday Releases From Ann Hampton Callaway and the Pittsburgh Jazz Orchestra
by Dan Bilawsky
The inevitability of new Christmas albums often fills jazz journalists with dread. And while some may assume it's because we're a cynical breed with unreasonable standards and upturned noses, that couldn't be further from the truth (in most cases). The reason jazz journalists approach new Christmas albums with caution is simple: the number of slipshod, hastily-produced, ...
Playing It Forward: A Pair From Vibraphonist Anthony Smith
by Dan Bilawsky
There are two ways to look at the vibraphone: as an instrument with constructional properties that limit those who stand before it or as a portal to possibility that challenges players to rise above those limitations. Anybody with a pragmatic bone in their body understands and accepts the former as a truth of sorts, as yarn ...
Dan Bilawsky's Best Releases Of 2015
by Dan Bilawsky
A theme for this year's list? How about “Jazz Unbound?" I initially planned on placing my picks into different categories, as I've often done in the past. But I thought better of it. The releases that caught my ear in 2015 cover the entire spectrum of possibility--winning straight-ahead outings, audacious affairs, dynamic debuts, intimate encounters, stellar ...
Ariel Pocock: Touchstone
by Dan Bilawsky
What are the touchstones of jazz? Harmonic acuity? Internalization of swing aesthetics and advanced rhythmic language(s)? The ability to quickly parse a composition in real time? An understanding of the historical framework of the music? The ability to create and speak one's own mind using any number of vocabulary sets? Yes. Each of those elements are ...
Scott Jeppesen: Wonders
by Dan Bilawsky
Ancient history and current times collide on the sophomore release from California-based tenor saxophonist Scott Jeppesen: with Wonders, he offers up an intelligent, semi-programmatic look at the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World as seen through a modern jazz lens. Jeppesen, a once-upon-a-time protégé of saxophonist Joe Henderson and a jazz studies doctoral ...
Mundell Lowe / Lloyd Wells / Jim Ferguson: Poor Butterfly
by Dan Bilawsky
Few people could ever claim to have played and/or recorded with such a storied list of performers as Sarah Vaughan, Ben Webster, Billie Holiday, Charlie Parker, Carmen McRae, Ella Fitzgerald, Blossom Dearie, Dizzy Gillespie, Bill Evans, and Lester Young. But Mundell Lowe can. In fact, that list barely scratches the surface when it comes to the ...
Samuel Torres Group: Forced Displacement
by Dan Bilawsky
When Chamber Music America awarded Colombian-born, New York-based percussionist Samuel Torres a New Jazz Works grant in 2012, the wheels started spinning in his mind. Ultimately, it would be his native land that would help determine the directional vision for the grant-funded work: Torres, inspired by a visit to San Juan de Urabá and an encounter ...
Dan Wilensky: Made In Portland
by Dan Bilawsky
Relocating is never easy, but it would seem that multi-reedist Dan Wilensky has acclimated quite well to the musical climate of Portland, Oregon since arriving there in 2012. The latest release from this man-of-many-talents puts him in close quarters with a collection of that city's finest musicians, a crew that's ready and eager to tackle Wilensky's ...
Larry Fuller Trio at Jazz at Kitano
by Dan Bilawsky
Larry Fuller Trio Jazz at Kitano New York, NY November 22, 2015 While jazz is a music founded and fed on innovation, it's also an art form steeped in tradition, forwarded through the passing of the torch to the next generation(s) in order to keep the life force of the ...
