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Sounding Sinatra: Tierney Sutton Performs at the Kennedy Center

by Franz A. Matzner
As good as a recording may be, there is just no substitute for a live performance. More often than not, an album can obscure hidden talents, and even the best releases, no matter how powerful, lack the vitality and immediacy of music in the flesh. Tierney Sutton's recent performance at the Kennedy Center's Jazz Club proved ...
Matt, Martin, and William: The Other MMW

by Matt Merewitz
The title of a recent AAJ interview, “ When Mays Plays, Musicians Listen ,” doesn’t fully fully tell the whole story about torch pianist Bill Mays. Not only musicians dig Mays. Non-musician audiences around the world enjoy his shows too. Perhaps this can be attributed to his versatility as an artist. The flexible pianist who spent ...
Joe McCarthy & The Afro-Bop Alliance

by Matt Merewitz
Not many Latin bands are making it these days without a singer. If you live in an urban area, you may notice the plethora of channels on your car radio playing salsa, meringue and cha-cha... they all feature a heaping dose of vocalists. Vocals may be an important part of the tradition, though it's the instrumentalists ...
Pianist James Williams Re-Opens Defunct Jazz Dive

by Matt Merewitz
Audience rapport is the true key for pianist James Williams. The Memphis-born Jazz Messenger alum has an urbane aura in his voice and his mannerisms that translate to his playing. He is a torch pianist much in the Ellingtonian tradition and fittingly has a special penchant for Strayhorn’s main d’oeuvre. What strikes me about Williams is ...
Monty Alexander Brings Reggae Jazz to Blue's Alley

by Franz A. Matzner
Monty Alexander is a profoundly entertaining storyteller. It might be better to state that still more precisely. Monty Alexander is a profound and entertaining story teller, and the truly distinctive quality of his performances is that it becomes impossible to discern the one from the other. This highly potent, heterogeneous concoction is just ...
Ray Vega Quintet at the KC Jazz Club

by Matt Merewitz
It's usually a bad thing to review a musician's live show and not own at least one of his records. Especially when his discography as a sideman is easily accessible in most record shops. Unfortunately, I do admit this was the case for myself in going to review Ray Vega's Latin Jazz Quintet at the Kennedy ...
Sakesho: Carribean Jazz Hits D.C.

by Franz A. Matzner
Blue's Alley April 8, 2004 You never know what to expect when you head out for a night of jazz, and to me that’s the best part of the jazz world. The music has become so diverse, so multi-cultural, and so stylistically varied that on any given evening even the most seasoned listener is ...
Saxophonist Paul Carr: DC's Mister PC

by Matt Merewitz
Paul Carr is a saxophone and flautist deeply rooted in the hard-bop and blues tradition of jazz. He has a guttural “Texas Tenor” sound which stems from his childhood years growing up in Houston, Texas. While he has a stunning jazz improvisatory vocabulary, his ability to move an audience is his greatest asset. Arriving in the ...
Ron Blake's MUSIC T'REE Flourishes Across Genres

by Matt Merewitz
A radio host throws on one of Ron Blake's discs ' perhaps his latest effort for Detroit-based Mack Avenue Records, Lest We Forget. Chances are - you dig. But who was that? Many of you have seen or heard this saxophonist live or on record, but there is no name to go with a sound. Don't ...
Tim Armacost: Rhythm and Transformation

by Matt Merewitz
Tim Armacost talks about 'choices [he] made' that determined the path he has taken as a musician. His direction was not always self-evident and its constant evolution has taken him from the US to Japan, to the Netherlands, to India, and back to the US, where has been for the past decade. In his ...