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Jazz from the Black Saint Label (1975 - 1989)
by Russell Perry
Ironically, the record label that most consistently offered an outlet for the American jazz avant-garde in the 1980s was the Italian Black Saint / Soul Note imprint. On All About Jazz, Jeff Stockton wrote, ..."from 1984 to 1989 Black Saint won the Down Beat critics poll for “Best Label" and “Best Producer" and established itself as ...
Jason Moran: Promoting the Freedom Principles
by Leo Sidran
Pianist, composer, conceptual artist Jason Moran on truth versus passion, promoting the “Freedom Principles," America's unfortunate way of forgetting the past, when innovation becomes rhetoric, what it means for African American musicians to move freely “from the stage to the table," the power dynamic in choosing repertoire, coming up in Houston among a generation of jazz ...
Matthew Shipp: Poetic Connection
by Seton Hawkins
It is difficult to describe the impact of pianist and composer Matthew Shipp without descending into hyperbole. A core figure in the now-legendary David S. Ware Quartet, a bandleader with a staggering recording output, a groundbreaking curator for the influential Blues Series of Thirsty Ear Records, Matthew Shipp has also more recently broken new ...
Drummers as Bandleaders: An Alternative Top Ten Albums
by Chris May
Drummers have been key members of every band which has changed the course of jazz history, from Max Roach with Charlie Parker to Elvin Jones with John Coltrane and onwards. Yet drummers have been the leaders of a surprisingly small proportion of landmark bands themselves. Chick Webb in the 1920s was the first of the few. ...
Make It New: Reshaping Jazz in the 21st Century
by Mark Sullivan
Make It New: Reshaping Jazz in the 21st Century Bill Beuttler 304 Pages ISBN: #978-1643150055 (13) Lever Press 2019 Journalist Bill Beuttler modeled this book after Joe Goldberg's Jazz Masters of the 50s (Macmillan Publishing Co, 1965). It devoted a chapter each to a dozen musicians, providing a ...
Matthew Shipp: The Piano Equation
by Mark Corroto
Let the celebration of pianist Matthew Shipp's 60th birthday year 2020 commence with The Piano Equation. Having released a dozen or so prior solo sessions, this also is a recording sans nostalgia. Shipp, like Cecil Taylor, Sun Ra, or Thelonious Monk before him, does not pine for the past, but ceaselessly forges a path onward. And ...
Jazz in the Time of Pandemic
by Karl Ackermann
The first week of April 2020: images crystalized the daily news reports; a dystopian Times Square; Piazza Navona in Rome, emptied of tourists, Barcelona's Basílica de la Sagrada Família standing like an abstract ruin, makeshift morgues in hospital parking lots. The jazz world is small but still a microcosm of society with interdependencies that run deep. ...
Results for pages tagged "Jaki Byard"...
Jaki Byard
Born:
A musician that has spanned the generations of Jazz is Jaki Byard. Jaki Byard was born John Arthur Byard, Jr. on June 15, 1922 in Worcester, Massachusetts. His father was a member of the marching hands at the turn of the 20th century and played the trombone. His mother played the piano for the African Methodist Episcopalian Zion Church (AME). His maternal grandmother played the piano for the silent picture shows (visual movies without sound before "talking movies" were invented). It was on that piano that Jaki began his musical odyssey.
When he was 8 years old, he started taking piano lessons from a piano teacher named Grace Johnson. The swing rhythm of the time and the lure of the big bands inspired Jaki throughout most of his career. At the age of 16, he played his first professional engagement. During WW II, Jaki was drafted into the army, but with luck and circumstance, he was able to join the army along with Earl Bostic, with whom he would later form a musical alliance with.
Vintage Dolphy
by Duncan Heining
Vintage Dolphy appeared originally in 1986/7 on both vinyl and CD. Featuring recordings from three separate live performances from Eric Dolphy, two at Carnegie Hall, both with his own quartet and in two 'third stream' settings devised by Gunther Schuller, the album provided intriguing insights into Dolphy's improvisational skills and approach. Were this not enough, the ...
The Very Singular Mr. Ran Blake
by Duncan Heining
There have been few American composers and musicians, with the ability to encapsulate their country's music in all its racial and ethnic complexity. We might perhaps point to Aaron Copland, Leonard Bernstein, Charles Ives and perhaps, in their own distaff ways, Harry Partch and Steve Reich. In jazz, their number is fewer still--Duke Ellington and George ...
