Results for "Donny McCaslin"

Michelle Lordi: Career Evolution

by R.J. DeLuke
May 12, 2020

Some artists are blessed to be born into situations where opportunities are at the ready. Education and training are easily obtainable. Maybe they have connections to the professional world, via their lineage or other friends. Even so, it's still up to them to produce and deal with the inevitable vagaries of their choice to pursue music ...

Pat Metheny: From This Place

by John Kelman
February 14, 2020

It's been a full six years since Pat Metheny last released a studio recording. This, despite the guitarist who has become, in a career now in the midst of its fifth decade, one of the most famous and influential jazz guitarists of his (or, some would argue, any) generation, reportedly having enough material in the can ...

Donny McCaslin

Born: August 11, 1966

Saxophonist Donny McCaslin and his band, featured on David Bowie‘s Blackstar, will make their Motéma Music debut with the October 14 release of Beyond Now, a highly anticipated album dedicated to Bowie. Recorded nearly three months after Bowie’s passing, the project is deeply influenced by their extraordinary experience collaborating with one of the greatest artists of all-time on his final album.

“It was like a dream except it was something I never could have dreamed of,” reflects McCaslin on working hand-in-hand with Bowie on Blackstar. “David Bowie was a visionary artist whose generosity, creative spirit, and fearlessness will stay with me the rest of my days. Beyond Now is dedicated to him and to all who loved him.”

Oded Tzur: Here Be Dragons

by Karl Ackermann
February 4, 2020

On his previous releases, Like a Great River (Enja, 2016) and Translator's Note (Enja, 2017), New York-based tenor saxophonist Oded Tzur amalgamated Eastern and Western elements and deep, balmy phrasing which drew sincere comparisons to John Coltrane. Not surprisingly, Manfred Eicher took notice and signed the Tel Aviv native to ECM for his third album, Here ...

Michelle Lordi: Break Up With the Sound

by C. Michael Bailey
January 22, 2020

Vocalist Michelle Lordi's house burned down at the end of 2017. That is a bracing life event from which one may find oneself at a brutally curious fork in the road. Lordi's Break Up With the Sound makes it seem that she blazed through Kubler Ross's five stages of loss and got to work on something ...

2019: The Year in Jazz

by Ken Franckling
January 2, 2020

The year 2019 was robust in many ways. International Jazz Day brought its biggest stage to Australia. An important but long-shuttered jazz mecca was revived in a coast-to-coast move. ECM Records celebrated a golden year. The music and its makers figured prominently on the big screen. The National Endowment for the Arts welcomed four new NEA ...

Break Up With the Sound

By Michelle Lordi

Label: Cabinet of Wonder Productions
Released: 2019
Track listing: Poor Bird; Wayward Wind; Double-Crossed; True Love; Before; No Expectations; Lover Man; Red House Serenata; Red House Blues; I'm So Lonesome.

Chase Baird: A Life Between

by Jerome Wilson
December 22, 2019

Chase Baird is a New York-based saxophonist who combines jazz with other musical genres. His work on this CD can sport, at various times, the melodicism of classical music, the sharp angles of progressive rock or the blunt thrust of funk. A very talented group of musicians helps him fulfill his vision here, including Brad Mehldau ...

Various Artists: Newvelle Muri

by Karl Ackermann
December 8, 2019

Swiss drummer/percussionist and composer, Stephan Diethelm lived in Zimbabwe for several years and was musically influenced by the African rhythms he heard. He had appeared on four albums when he launched the Muri Series, an ongoing succession of concerts that began in 2002, sometimes called Musig im Pflegidach. Pflegidach is a monastery that dates to the ...

Michael Leonhart: Suite Extracts Vol. 1

by Angelo Leonardi
October 21, 2019

Credo proprio di non esagerare ma è dall'uscita di There Comes a Time di Gil Evans che non ascoltavo un album orchestrale così eclettico nella sintesi di materiali diversi. Il nuovo disco di Michael Leonhart segue il debutto di The Painted Lady Suite (Sunnyside 2018), il maestoso affresco musicale che evocava l'impressionismo del primo Evans, con ...