Results for "George Gershwin"

George Gershwin

George Gershwin was born Jacob Gershowitz in Brooklyn in 1898, the second of four children from a close-knit immigrant family. He began his musical career as a song-plugger on Tin Pan Alley, but was soon writing his own pieces. Gershwin's first published song, "When You Want ‘Em, You Can't Get ‘Em," demonstrated innovative new techniques, but only earned him five dollars. Soon after, however, he met a young lyricist named Irving Ceaser. Together they composed a number of songs including "Swanee," which sold more than a million copies. In the same year as "Swanee," Gershwin collaborated with Arthur L

Chet Baker: An Alternative Top Ten Albums To Get Lost In

By CHRIS MAY

Chet Baker was born to a farmer's daughter and a hard-drinking, weed-smoking singer and guitarist in a Western Swing band in Yale, Oklahoma in 1929. Like many Okies, the family fared badly during the Great Depression but did a little better after moving to Glendale, California in 1939. Largely self-taught as a trumpeter, Baker honed his ...

Guy Mintus Trio

Eric Ineke JazzXpress Featuring Tineke Postma At Bimhuis

By MARTIN MCFIE

Eric Ineke JazzXpress featuring Tineke Postma Bimhuis Amsterdam, Holland September 5, 2020 Dutch drummer and bandleader Eric Ineke's JazzXpress featured Tineke Postma on her alto saxophone for a centenary celebration of Charlie Parker's fast, virtuoso bebop. Postma studied at the Amsterdam conservatory and the whole band is based locally. The ...

Chick Corea: Plays

By MIKE JURKOVIC

As we huddle and binge on our national and moral failings, having as buoyant and engaging an artist come into our homes, as Chick Corea does on Plays, is simply a great, beautiful thing, and one of the core reasons that, even in the face of the daily ire, the majority of us hold tight the ...

Julian Shore: Where We Started

By TROY DOSTERT

A pianist of uncommon sensitivity and graceful temperament, Julian Shore crafts music with atmosphere and feeling, aiming for emotional depth rather than settling for typical jazz devices. On Where We Started, his third release, he offers eight well-honed tracks which are both evocative and nuanced; while they might not win over the uninitiated in a crowded ...

Susan Tobocman: Touch & Go

By TROY DOSTERT

A triple-threat musician with significant talent as a vocalist, composer and arranger, Susan Tobocman's path to jazz was an unconventional one. Her early interest in poetry led to a scholarship that took her from her hometown, Detroit, to New York, for study at Columbia University. That in turn led to an interest in musical theater, followed ...

Blue Note Records: Lost In Space: 20 Overlooked Classic Albums

By CHRIS MAY

For anyone with a passion for Blue Note, it is hard to conceive of an album that has been “overlooked," let alone twenty of them. For connoisseurs of the most influential label in jazz history, the passion can be all consuming: if a dedicated collector does not have all the albums (yet), he or she will ...

Erroll Garner: Erroll Garner Plays Gershwin & Kern

By CHRIS MAY

The British newspaper The Times once nailed Abdullah Ibrahim's appeal thus: “There are few musicians in jazz who can make you feel that essentially all is right in the world." The late Erroll Garner is another pianist whose music could be similarly described. You might argue that Ibrahim's task is harder, because much of his work ...