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Jaki Byard: A Matter of Black and White
by Charles Walker
Curious title for this album. Sure, it's a nice pun on the pianistic adventures included, but with the possible exception of Duke Ellington or Mary Lou Williams, there was hardly another jazz pianist of the mid-20th Century who saw more gray areas in the music's broad landscape than the late Jaki Byard. In his trio sessions ...
Riverwalk Jazz presents William Warfield This Week
This week on Riverwalk Jazz, the late theater legend William Warfield joins The Jim Cullum Jazz Band in an encore presentation, combining Mr. Warfield's masterful readings of Langston Hughes' poems with musical selections by Duke Ellington and James P. Johnson. The hour-long radio show is distrubuted across the US by Public Radio International and worldwide on ...
Clarence Johnson: Low Down Papa
by Nic Jones
Pianist Clarence “Jelly" Johnson recorded for the Paramount label between 1923 and 1925. He was also accompanist to Chicago blues singers Sodarisa Miller and Edna Taylor amongst others, and recorded piano rolls in New York for the QRS label alongside James P. Johnson and Fats Waller. But, apart from that, very little is known about him, ...
Ethan Iverson/Larry Grenadier/Paul Motian at the Village Vanguard on March 3, 2011
by Warren Allen
Ethan Iverson / Larry Grenadier / Paul MotianThe Village VanguardNew York, NYMarch 3, 2011 The press that followed the rise of The Bad Plus rocked jazz's slightly dusty seismometer. And with it, pianist Ethan Iversion rose to the forefront of the jazz piano world for his heart-pounding work in the ...
David Lopato: Many Moons
by Dan Bilawsky
Pianist David Lopato's Many Moons could just as easily have been called Many Moods, with the variety of approaches he takes on these twelve original piano pieces. Jazz is only one area of expertise on Lopato's large resume, which also includes extensive studies on African drumming and Javanese gamelan, scoring work for theater and dance, and ...
Turn Up Those Footnotes!
by Andrew J. Sammut
Even if the names William Shakespeare and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart ring some bells for contemporary audiences, chances are Thomas Marlowe or Giovanni Paisiello might not get a chime. Yet, Marlowe's plays drew droves of theatergoers in Elizabethan England, and Paisiello's operas packed 18th century houses. It doesn't take an English scholar or the ...
Hughes' Blues: The Langston Hughes Songbook
We know Langston Hughes as a celebrated African-American author of poems, essays, stories, memoirs and more. But Hughes also wrote songs-hundreds of them. Music was at the heart of his work, with jazz and blues informing the cadences, structures, and subject matter of many of his poems. In an early essay, “The Negro Artist and the ...
Smalls Jazz Club: Live and So Much More
by Mark Corroto
After a few minutes talking with pianist Spike Wilner, Charlie Parker's quote about authenticity in music comes to mind: “If you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn..." Actually, the entirety of Bird's thoughts best captures the art of Spike Wilner. Bird goes on to state: “They teach you there's a boundary line ...
Love Songs by Champian Fulton
by Daniel Kassell
The Champian Fulton TrioBirdlandNew York City, USADecember 16, 2010“Please welcome Champian Fulton," Birdland's proprietor, John Valente, announced at six o'clock on Thursday night, December 16th, 2010. Why the unusual early start time? Hush, hush, Fulton had arranged to showcase her trio for Palmetto Records. Opening with “No One Loves ...
Randy Weston: African Stories, African Rhythms
by Ian Patterson
In over 60 years as a leader, pianist Randy Weston has achieved an incredible amount. He has recorded nearly 50 albums and has been hailed in the process as the natural heir to Duke Ellington and Thelonious Monk. Three times he has been voted Downbeat's composer of the year, and his compositions have been recorded by ...
