Home » Search Center » Results: Derek Taylor
Results for "Derek Taylor"
Charles Gayle 3: Precious Soul
by Derek Taylor
Like the Holy Trinity at the cynosure of Charles Gayle's religious faith the trio of leader, bass and drums exists as the foundation for nearly all of his music. Even his explorations into larger instrumentations have at their core the central stanchion of this steadfast template. Solo settings are the only other context where he is ...
Peter Br: Right As Rain
by Derek Taylor
In the late spring of 2000, while in the midst of grueling tour with his tentet, Peter Brötzmann received some sobering news. Werner Lüdi, saxophonist, fellow improviser, and friend had passed away. Lüdi had been an infrequent collaborator of Brötzmann's over the years but the two men shared an endemic musical vision as early insurgents in ...
Ivo Perelman: The Eye Listens
by Derek Taylor
Saxophonist and sometime cellist Ivo Perelman was one of the most promising players of free jazz in the early 1990s. A prolific series of recordings disseminated on a clutch of labels including Homestead, Leo, CIMP, Music & Arts and others pointed firmly to his rising primacy in the music. Strangely, just as his star was reaching ...
Various: The Jazz Scene: San Francisco
by Derek Taylor
San Francisco was a cultural furnace in the 1950s- a hotbed of artistic innovation and exploration. From the winding stream of consciousness treatises of the Beats to the creative explorations of the Bay Area jazz cadre and the frequent overlap between the two things were in a word ‘jumping.’ This recent Fantasy reissue captures some of ...
Red Rodney: The Quintets
by Derek Taylor
There’s scene in Clint Eastwood’s biopic Bird that immediately springs to mind hearing these seminal Red Rodney sides. In the scene Rodney is forced to sing in front of an audience of rural Southerners under the dubious alias of blues singer in order to substantiate a ruse devised by Charlie Parker to camouflage his quintet’s racially-integrated ...
Various: The Prestige Legacy Vol. 1: The High Priests
by Derek Taylor
This appropriately titled disc, the first in what will presumably be a continuing series of retrospective compilations, gathers seminal work by the four bop Brahmins of the Prestige label- Rollins, Davis, Coltrane and Monk. Each one of sixteen tracks is a cornerstone classic in jazz history, but curiously the uniformly stellar nature of the material points ...
Ray Draper: Tuba Sounds
by Derek Taylor
“A Promise Derailed.” Such of phrase could easily have been etched on Ray Draper’s tombstone to describe the tubaist’s trials in life and music. Killed in a botched robbery at the tragic age of 42 his troubles both personal and musical hounded him for much of his life. But reading the original liners to this reissue ...
Ray Draper: Tuba Sounds
by Derek Taylor
“A Promise Derailed.” Such of phrase could easily have been etched on Ray Draper’s tombstone to describe the tubaist’s trials in life and music. Killed in a botched robbery at the tragic age of 42 his troubles both personal and musical hounded him for much of his life. But reading the original liners to this reissue ...
Pretige Jazz Quartet: Prestige Jazz Quartet
by Derek Taylor
With post-bop and free now serving as the primary currencies of innovation the term ‘modernist’ has somewhat dated connotations in today’s jazz speak. Back in the 1950s however the radical advancements of Be-Bop had largely gained acceptability amongst all but the most resolute moldy fig members of the jazz intelligentsia. Modernist players and composers were searching ...
Philly Joe Jones: Philly Mignon
by Derek Taylor
Pun-laden title aside this is a gourmet collection of hard swinging jazz. Philly Joe in his later years may have been a shade less audacious than in his youth, but you’d never know it listening to his bristling precision traps work on these five tracks. Manning his kit like a man possessed Jones pushes his rhythm ...
