Results for "George Winston"

George Winston

George Winston grew up mainly in Montana, and also spent his later formative years in Mississippi and Florida. During this time, his favorite music was instrumental rock and instrumental R&B, including Floyd Cramer, the Ventures, Booker T & The MG’s, Jimmy Smith, and many more. Inspired by R&B, jazz, Blues and rock (especially the Doors), George began playing organ in 1967. In 1971 he switched to the acoustic piano after hearing recordings from the 1920s and the 1930s by the legendary stride pianists Thomas “Fats” Waller and the late Teddy Wilson. In addition to working on stride piano, he also at this time came up with this own style of melodic instrumental music on solo piano, called folk piano

Shambhu: Soothing Guitar for Stressful Times

By JAKOB BAEKGAARD

The times we live in call for reflection and one of the ways of providing it is through music. Music can slow our lives down and make us live in the moment, but it can also connect people. Since he discovered music, guitarist and composer Shambhu Neil Vineberg has been on a journey that has seen ...

Frank Zappa's Jazz Legacy Refuses to Die, Part 2

By LUDOVICO GRANVASSU

This week we continue the retrospective dedicated to Frank Zappa's complex relationship with jazz, through a mix of the jazzier compositions performed by Zappa himself and countless tributes to his music paid by jazz musicians. As Frank Zappa loved to say, quoting Edgard Varèse, “the present day composer refuses to die" and the ...

Radka Toneff: Fairytales

By GARETH THOMPSON

Norway's best-selling jazz album ever is also a recording laced with tragedy. Only weeks after its 1982 release, singer Radka Toneff was found dead in the Bygdøy woods, near Oslo. She was aged thirty. The verdict was suicide caused by an overdose of sleeping pills. Toneff was born in 1952 and by her ...

Piano – Emily Bear, Dan Cray, Lisa Hilton, Emmet Cohen, Julien Labro

By C. MICHAEL BAILEY

Like jazz vocal releases, piano-led affairs are legion. The jazz piano combo is a format that is difficult to get either bad or good. Here are five recent releases looking for the latter. Emily Bear Trio Into the Blue Edston Records 2015 The immediate charm ...

The Anatomy of Vince Guaraldi

By MARC DAVIS

Vince GuaraldiThe Anatomy of Vince Guaraldi Jazz Casual Productions 2016 In 1962, jazz pianist Vince Guaraldi scored a surprise hit with his catchy, upbeat record “Cast Your Fate to the Wind." Three years later, millions of Americans who thought they didn't like jazz discovered Guaraldi's music on the debut ...

Lyle Mays Quartet: The Ludwigsburg Concert

By KARL ACKERMANN

He has been referred to as Pat Metheny's alter ego, in the way that Billy Strayhorn was to Duke Ellington. Pianist/composer Lyle Mays was born with perfect pitch in a tiny rural hamlet of Wisconsin. Had it not been for his family's strong affinity for music, Mays may have had little exposure in that environment. Mays ...

Steven Schoenberg: Christmas Reimagined

By C. MICHAEL BAILEY

Categorization is an anti-entropic effort to describe similar, but not equal, things for comparative reasons. So was my thinking when I began my review of pianist Steven Schoenberg's recording Steven Schoenberg Live: An Improvisational Journey (Quabbin Records, 2009) with: “Like the face of Helen launching a thousand ships, for better or worse, Keith ...