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Natalie Cressman and Secret Garden: Unfolding
by Jeff Dayton-Johnson
Looking for antecedents for trombonist/vocalist Natalie Cressman? All About Jazz's C. Michael Bailey correctly points us to Jack Teagarden, the original singing trombonist. And, in fact, Cressman finds plenty of opportunity in the funkier passages of Unfolding, her debut album, to deploy a fluid and full Teagarden-like sound on the instrument.But Cressman--twenty years old ...
Kat Parra: Las Aventuras de Pasion!
by Jeff Dayton-Johnson
A collaboration between vocalist Kat Parra and trombonist/arranger Wayne Wallace would be reason enough to celebrate ¡Las Aventuras de Pasión!, the duo favoring a slightly more languorous than usual Afro-Cuban jazz, richly played and brightly sung. Wallace has mined this vein on a string of remarkably good records over the last decade or so. Highlights of ...
Anna Estrada: Volando
by Jeff Dayton-Johnson
Vocalist Anna Estrada's Volando can be comfortably shelved in the Latin Jazz section of your record library, but Estrada herself more fancifully--and more accurately-- describes it as an exercise in crossing borders. Given the record's title ("volando" means “flying"), it's perhaps more a matter of flying over those boundaries. There are at least four such frontiers ...
Derrick Bang: Vince Guaraldi at the Piano
by Jeff Dayton-Johnson
Vince Guaraldi at the Piano Derrick Bang 390 pages ISBN: 978-0-7864-5902-5 McFarland Books 2012 Based on Derrick Bang's encyclopedic biography of pianist Vince Guaraldi, you can draw two perhaps surprising conclusions about the subject's contribution to jazz. First, Guaraldi arguably hipped more listeners to this musical form ...
Sumi Tonooka: NOW: Solo Live at the Howland Cultural Center
by Jeff Dayton-Johnson
There are some jazz players who suffer an unusually large gap between their credentials and their renown. Pianist Sumi Tonooka is a case in point. She studied with Mary Lou Williams, made her recording début with Detroit trumpeter Marcus Belgrave (of Motown/Tribe Records fame), and was part of Philly Joe Jones's band. Two especially strong albums--Long ...
Magic Malik: Alternate Steps
by Jeff Dayton-Johnson
Flutist Malik Mezzadri grew up on the Caribbean island of Guadeloupe, and moved to France to study at the conservatory in Marseille when he was 17. There he would win the first prize in flute; for more than twenty years, his subsequent idiosyncratic career as Magic Malik has seen him energetically flitting about the territory where ...
RJ Smith: The One - The Life and Music of James Brown
by Jeff Dayton-Johnson
The One: The Life and Music of James Brown RJ SmithHardcover, 464 pagesISBN: 978-1592406579Gotham Books2012James Brown (1933-2006): singer, bandleader, composer, impresario, self-made man-- Amiri Baraka called him “our number one black poet." Brown describes himself, in the pages of RJ Smith's biography, as “75 ...
Wadada Leo Smith: Ten Freedom Summers
by Jeff Dayton-Johnson
Wadada Leo SmithTen Freedom SummersCuneiform Records2012Trumpeter and composer Wadada Leo Smith's Ten Freedom Summers is four and a half hours of music, spread over four compact discs. The mind struggles to make coherent sense of so large an undertaking. Smith has said that there are no recurring musical ...
Gabriel Zufferey: Contemplation
by Jeff Dayton-Johnson
Jazz mashups are in the air. First, pianist Robert Glasper artfully wove pianist Herbie Hancock's “Maiden Voyage" together with Radiohead's “Everything in its Right Place" on the his In My Element (Blue Note, 2007). The Jazz Punks' raucous Smashups (Foam @ the Mouth, 2012) mashed up saxophonist Sonny Rollins with guitarist Jimi Hendrix, and Led Zeppelin ...
Freddie Hubbard: Straight Life (40th Anniversary Edition)
by Jeff Dayton-Johnson
CTI Records reissued trumpeter Freddie Hubbard's November 1970 date, Straight Life, in 2011. As with some of the other reissues in this series (see John Kelman's in-depth discussion of some of the more important of these), its availability on compact disc has been spotty. Straight Life is a good--if not great--record, and it's good to have ...
