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Richie Beirach: Indelible Memories and Thought-Provoking Reflections on a Life in Jazz, Part 2
by Victor L. Schermer
Part 1 | Part 2 Richie Beirach hovers somewhat mysteriously in the pantheon of the great modern jazz pianists. Some of the others in that category from his generation (coming up in the 1960s/'70s), like Herbie Hancock, Keith Jarrett, Chick Corea, and Kenny Barron have greater celebrity, but Beirach easily qualifies alongside them as ...
Grover Washington Jr.: Sacred Kind of Love: The Columbia Recordings
by Jakob Baekgaard
When saxophonist and composer Grover Washington Jr. (1943-1999) arrived at Columbia in 1986, he was already a fully formed artist. He had released a string of strong albums and had even landed a regular smash-hit with Just the Two Us," his collaboration with singer Bill Withers. In other words, Washington had nothing to prove and could ...
Richie Beirach-Gregor Huebner Duo and the WDR Big Band: Crossing Borders
by Jack Bowers
The borders" that are earmarked to be crossed in this new album by pianist Richie Bierach, violinist Gregor Huebner and Germany's superb WDR Big Band are both geographic and musical. The collaborative effort is intended, on the one hand, to bridge the gap between people of various ethnicities and backgrounds and help bring them together, and, ...
Invisible Man: Willis Conover and The Jazz Hour
by Karl Ackermann
Willis Conover stood with a cordoned off pool of reporters and photographers, being kept at arms-length from celebrities and dignitaries on the White House lawn. There was no table assigned to him at Bill Clinton's 1993 celebration of the fortieth anniversary of the Newport Jazz Festival though Conover had been involved with George Wein's project from ...
Art Pepper: Unreleased Art Pepper Vol. 10: Toronto
by C. Michael Bailey
Laurie Pepper, widow of alto saxophonist Art Pepper, achieved a life milestone in her brilliantly liberating sequel to Straight Life--The Story Of Art Pepper By Art And Laurie Pepper (Da Capo Press, 1983), where she rhetorically asked: If Art hadn't had me there constantly assessing his mood, taking his aesthetic temperature, would he then ...
Meet Nora Sheehan Schaaf
by Tessa Souter and Andrea Wolper
Before we jump into November's column, we'd like to know: Are YOU a jazz super fan? If you are and you'd like to be featured in an upcoming column, click here and send us a message! Nora Sheehan Schaaf, along with her husband, Homer, has been going out to hear live jazz ...
Il meglio di Norma Winstone
by Angelo Leonardi
Protagonista del jazz britannico dagli anni settanta in poi, Norma Winstone è una delle grandi voci del jazz europeo nella sua accezione più ampia: dalla libera improvvisazione al camerismo ECM, dalla sperimentazione d'avanguardia al mainstream. La riedizione di questi tre classici degli anni novanta ci ricorda la sua particolare versatilità. Norma Winstone era ...
Dálava, Gordon Grdina and Mikkel Ploug: Songs Old, and Sounds New
by Mark Werlin
Strangeness--a word that connotes foreignness, otherness, and a sense of unease when confronted by the unfamiliar. The sound of recognizable musical forms may attract us, in the same way we are drawn to familiar faces or voices. The sound of a foreign language may set us on the alert; syllables we do not recognize, meanings we ...
The Many Faces of Jazz Today: The Big Picture
by Victor L. Schermer
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 [In a series of five interviews entitled The Many Faces of Jazz: Critical Dialogues," All About Jazz asked three musicians, a public relations manager, and a jazz educator about the state of jazz in the world today. ...
Yelena Eckemoff: In The Shadow Of A Cloud
by John Kelman
She may rarely perform live in this context, but Yelena Eckemoff has managed to build, over just seven years and a mammoth eleven releases--including her second release of 2017, In the Shadow of a Cloud--a loyal and growing following in the jazz world. It's all the more remarkable for a multi-talented expat Russian pianist who began ...


