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Results for "Extended Analysis"
Chuck Owen and the Jazz Surge: River Runs
by Jack Bowers
On this powerful and ambitious “concerto for jazz guitar, saxophone and orchestra," composer Chuck Owen's Jazz Surge is bolstered by a thirty-four member reed, brass and string section that helps guide the listener on a picturesque journey along a number of rivers of various shapes, sizes and currents whose aim is to rekindle through musical portraiture ...
Kanye West: Yeezus
by Jeff Dayton-Johnson
Ben Jonson said of his dead child, my sin was too much hope of thee, loved boy. We too easily take what the poets write as figures of speech, as pretty images, as strings of bons mots. Sometimes perhaps they speak the truth. --Margaret Drabble, The Millstone (1965).Every time I write these ...
Chris Kelsey & What I Say: The Electric Miles Project
by Jeff Dayton-Johnson
Trumpeter Miles Davis' post-Bitches Brew (Columbia, 1970), pre-hiatus (1975-1981) electric music--dense, loud, dark, funky, vast--has posed problems for musicians. The Yo Miles! collective, led by trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith and guitarist Henry Kaiser, gamely approached it as a repertoire: these are songs, they seemed to say; let's just play them (and so they did, on albums ...
Myriad 3: Tell
by Dave Wayne
Three young guys in suits. Piano trio with a “band" name. Canadian. All original compositions except for “C Jam Blues." Wait, “C Jam Blues"? What? No indie rock covers? Well, then there's no way these guys could be Canada's answer to The Bad Plus. No electronics or sampling. Well, then Myriad 3 are not Canada's answer ...
Orchester Kurt Edelhagen: Big Bands Live
by Jack Bowers
Maestro Kurt Edelhagen's Orchestra was a band for its time, deftly blending elements of swing, pop and jazz to help move Germany--at least the Western part of it--away from Nazi strictures and toward a more open-handed environment that not only tolerated but nourished the country's alliance to big-band music that spawned a wide array of world-class ...
Mort Weiss: A Giant Step Out and Back
by Sammy Stein
A while back, flamboyant and forthright clarinetist Mort Weiss sent an email saying he was going to make a free form album. Frankly, it was hard to believe as no-one had been more against free form jazz than Weiss. For around two years he had been taking free form apart, decrying many players and the genre, ...
Kim Richmond Concert Jazz Orchestra: Artistry
by Jack Bowers
On Artistry, the Kim Richmond Concert Jazz Orchestra pays homage to one of Richmond's former employers, the legendary Stan Kenton, not by rehashing music performed by the Kenton Orchestra--no matter how forward-leaning that may have been--but rather by renovating a few themes associated with Kenton (and quite a few others that weren't) in the manner in ...
Scottish National Jazz Orchestra: In the Spirit of Duke
by Jack Bowers
It had long been saxophonist Tommy Smith's dream to perform and record a live concert of music written by or associated with the great Duke Ellington. As leader of the acclaimed Scottish National Jazz Orchestra, Smith set about making that dream come true, and in October 2012 it happened, as an enthusiastic audience saw and heard ...
Henri Roger: When Bip Bip Sleeps
by Eyal Hareuveni
How can a free improvised setting, a typical serious musical happening, serious-as-your-life, almost by definition, blend with music associated with fun, such as cartoons soundtracks? Quite naturally if open-minded musicians participate in such happening, ones who disregard such artificial distinctions and like to blur outdated conventions. French self-taught guitarist and pianist Henri Roger ...
Denny Zeitlin: Both/And
by Dan McClenaghan
Pianist Denny Zeitlin has the distinction--among many others--of having written one of the loveliest of love songs: “Love Theme From Invasion of the Bodysnatchers." The tune can be heard in its unadorned beauty on Zeitlin's Precipice (Sunnyside Records, 2010), the recording of an extraordinarily beautiful and adventurous solo concert. The original version of the tune, from ...
