Results for "Interview"

Bari Beast Frank Basile's Simple Keys to Success

May 13, 2011

Baritonist Frank Basile gets around. And by that I mean shakin' up the scene with the likes of The Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, The Dizzy Gillespie All Star Big Band, The Jimmy Heath Big Band, The Dave Holland Big Band, The Joe Lovano Nonet, Michael Bublé, The Christian McBride Big Band, Pablo Mayor's Folklore Urbano, The Richie ...

Singer/songwriter Frank McComb revives early '70s heyday of soul, R&B, and jazz fusion on new CD

May 13, 2011

What to singer/songwriter Frank McComb is A New Beginning is actually a fond trip back for music buffs, especially those who lived through the early '70s heyday of soul and R&B. On A New Beginning, McComb echoes the incandescent urban pop of Stevie Wonder, the rhythmic jazz of George Benson, and the pulsating fusion of Herbie ...

Intervista a Pasquale Mirra

by AAJ Italy Staff
May 12, 2011

Pasquale Mirra e il vibrafono. Una storia che parte da pentole, tegami e tamburi di latta, prende forma nei corridoi del conservatorio, incomincia a concretizzarsi nelle serate estive di Ravello, e spicca il volo grazie all'ascolto di alcuni dischi. Ma è una storia che è solo agli inizi perché il vibrafono è uno strumento relativamente giovane ...

Zim Ngqawana: Sound, Song, and Humanity

by AAJ Staff
May 12, 2011

(Ed. note: we're celebrating the life and music of Zim Ngqawana by reprinting this 2002 interview. Ngqawana passed away in Johannesburg, after suffering a stroke on May 10th. He was 52.) For Zim Ngqawana, citizenship is a relative concept. He may be a South African, but he insists that he is first and foremost ...

Something Else! Interview: Steve Lukather, of Toto

May 12, 2011

Steve Lukather was gearing up for a summer tour in Europe when he got the news: Rare recognition had arrived for him, not just as a co-founder of the often-overlooked band Toto but—and this is rarer still—as a sideman. Lukather was recently honored by Gibson.com, the legendary guitar-maker's official Web site, as one of the Top ...

UYS: Myra Melford interview

May 12, 2011

A Clifford Jordan Revival

May 11, 2011

Rifftides reader Debra Kinzler's notice that a quartet of Clifford Jordan's admirers will revive his Glass Bead Games prompts me to post a slightly revised version of a 2007 piece about a landmark recording that became unavailable for too long. Ms. Kinzler informs us that tenor saxophonist Seamus Blake, pianist Eric Reed, drummer Billy Drummond and ...

Requiem for Zim Ngqawana (1959-2011)

May 11, 2011

By Thomas Rome From profoundest loss I struggle to speak of the passing of one of the jazz world's most significant personalities of his generation. South African saxophonist Zim Ngqawana, 51, left us far too early last night at Charlotte Maxeke Johannesburg Academic Hospital, victim of a stroke. Nowhere do the strikingly parallel cultural identities of ...

Face of the Bass: The Atlas of Jazz

May 10, 2011

The great Milt Hinton often said that the bass is the “Atlas of jazz" because its role in the jazz band is to “carry the other instruments on its shoulders." “Bass" is often misspelled as “base" but the meaning is very similar in music, that of “foundation." In early jazz bands, bassists played the bass fiddle, ...

Omar Sosa: Bringing The World To The World

by AAJ Staff
May 10, 2011

Pianist/composer Omar Sosa was born in Cuba in the first decade of Fidel Castro's rule over the island, and grew up listening to forbidden American jazz with his music school friends in secret, the radio discretely turned low, though eventually the rules changed and the music was broadcast in Cuba, too. After Cuba and a short ...