Results for "Elton Dean"

Elton Dean

Elton Dean, who died at 60 on February 8th 2006, was a totally unique musician : at times lyrical and moving, at others explosive and unsettling, his approach of saxophone playing was totally his own, besides the fact that he favoured a little-used member of the sax family : the saxello, an hybrid between alto and soprano, with an instantly recognizable sound. Over the years, Dean lent his immense talents to bands like Soft Machine, Soft Heap, In Cahoots and L'Equip'Out, as well as many jazz ensembles featuring Keith Tippett, Hugh Hopper, Pip Pyle, Mark Hewins and John Etheridge. Elton Dean was born in Nottingham in 1945

Keith Tippett: 100 Best Foots Forward

By DUNCAN HEINING

From the Albert Hall at twenty-two with a fifty-piece band to picking potatoes to make ends meet a decade later, Keith Tippett's life in music could sum up many a jazz career. After a grim '80s, things now look better for the composer, pianist and bandleader. “What I'm about to say is ridiculous but it was ...

Soft Machine: Hidden Details

By CHRIS M. SLAWECKI

Hidden Details celebrates the fiftieth anniversary of Soft Machine's 1968 eponymous debut, a seismic event in the British psychedelic, jazz and rock music landscapes that still reverbates as the Canterbury scene/sound. This anniversary studio celebration also brought about Soft Machine's first tour of North America since 1974, with several 2018 shows featuring Gary Husband as guest ...

Big Bands, Orchestras and Soft Machines

By CHRIS M. SLAWECKI

Randy Brecker & NDR Bigband Rocks Piloo Records & Productions LLC 2019 The easiest answer isn't always the best answer, but sometimes it is. So it's both easy and proper to point out that trumpet and flugelhorn master, composer, and bandleader Randy Brecker was kind enough ...

Roberto Ottaviano: Eternal Love

By NERI POLLASTRI

Dopo il lavoro dedicato in spirito a John Coltrane pur senza omaggi diretti (Sideralis) e quello precedente dedicato a Steve Lacy (Forgotten Matches), Roberto Ottaviano ha sentito il bisogno di “un “bagno mistico" in cui il Jazz si fa infine Musica Totale, ma sopratutto travalica l'idea fine a se stessa di fare musica, per scavare a ...

Soft Machine: Hidden Details

By JOHN KELMAN

Following a series of releases for Moonjune Records under the moniker Soft Machine Legacy, beginning with 2005's Live in Zaandam and concluding, most recently, with 2013's Burden of Proof, this quartet consisting largely of members from the classic Canterbury group Soft Machine has finally decided to drop the “Legacy" and go it with the original name ...

Naima/Live in Berlin

By DUNCAN HEINING

Saxophonist Alan Skidmore has worked in many, many different settings during a career that stretches back to the early sixties with Alexis Korner--one of the three 'Fathers of British Blues" (paternity disputed!). That career has included recordings with John Mayall and Eric Clapton, Georgie Fame, Sonny Boy Williamson, Stan Tracey, Mike Westbrook, Mike Gibbs, the Walker ...

Leonardo Pavkovic: Nothing is Ordinary

By CHRIS M. SLAWECKI

More than any other person, Leonardo Pavkovic has made me write some crazy shit. Pavkovic is the primal force behind the joyously eclectic MoonJune Records, which he established in 2001. “Established" may not be the right word: “I am truly an unusual and rules breaking call-it-record-company with a 'label' identity despite the fact that ...

Culture Clubs: Part IV: When Jazz Met Europe

By KARL ACKERMANN

The Geography of Jazz--When Jazz Met Europe In 2004 Maureen Anderson, a researcher at Illinois State University contributed a dissertation to the journal, African American Review, titled The White Reception of Jazz in America. Ostensibly, her article deals with stories published in high profile periodicals and journals from 1917 and into the 1930s, written by white ...

King Crimson: Sailors' Tales 1970-1972

By JOHN KELMAN

If it's a fundamental truth that adversity can sometimes bring the absolute best, creatively speaking, out of music and the people who make it, then the roughly 23 months following the release of King Crimson's classic 1969 debut, In the Court of the Crimson King (Island)--and, after a single North American tour, the breakup of its ...