Results for "Jim Hall"

Jim Hall

Jim Hall, born in Buffalo, and educated at the Cleveland Institute of Music, moved to Los Angeles where he began to attract national, and then international, attention in the late 1950s. By 1960 Jim had arrived in New York to work with Sonny Rollins and Art Farmer, among others. His live and recorded collaborations with Bill Evans, Paul Desmond, and Ron Carter, are legendary. Not only is Jim Hall one of the jazz world's favorite guitarists, but he has also earned critical acclaim for his skills as a composer and arranger. The first formal recognition came in 1997, when Jim won the New York Jazz Critics Circle Award for Best Jazz Composer/Arranger

Nir Felder: II

By MIKE JACOBS

Six years after the release of his solo debut, Golden Age (Okeh, 2014), Nir Felder's follow-up II brings into sharper focus some of the guitarist's more compelling dichotomies as a player. His instrument of choice is the usually more crystalline-sounding Stratocaster but Felder somehow elicits a fatter-than-a-big-ol'-jazz-box tone from it. His style as ...

Benjamin Koppel: Curiosity Won't Kill This Cat

By R.J. DELUKE

Benjamin Koppel is an extraordinary Danish musician from an illustrious music family. He is all about music—of just about any kind. He's always absorbing it, discovering what there is to derive from it. A kind of restless desire to explore envelops him. He simplifies it in his own words: he's curious. It comes naturally to him. ...

Paul Desmond: The Complete 1975 Toronto Recordings

By C. ANDREW HOVAN

Even if he had never played another note following the break-up of the Dave Brubeck group in 1967, alto saxophonist Paul Desmond would have entered the history books as one of music's most brilliant improvisers. During his 17 years with Brubeck, Desmond proved himself to be an indispensable part of that quartet with a wistful and ...

Guillermo Bazzola: Lost & Found

By GIUSEPPE SEGALA

La musica di Kenny Wheeler serba una nicchia preziosa di estimatori pari alla sua qualità e originalità. Il chitarrista di origine argentina Guillermo Bazzola apparecchia questo degno omaggio al compianto trombettista, penetrando nella sua personalità con sensibile attenzione, con rispetto e delicatezza. Bazzola, nato e cresciuto in Argentina, si è trasferito nel 2002 a Madrid, dove ...

John Stein: Watershed

By CHRIS M. SLAWECKI

As his eleventh release on the label, Watershed continues the elegant and blissful creative marriage between guitarist John Stein and Whaling City Sound. A good marriage is based in compromise, in accommodating give-and-take, and Stein's give-and-take with this rhythm section of bassist Frank Herzberg, drummer Zé Eduardo Nazario and pianist Daniel Grajew creates beautiful, delightful music. ...

Chuck Anderson: Dominos

By VICTOR L. SCHERMER

This noteworthy album by Chuck Anderson, one of our finest guitarists, was composed and recorded in the midst of the pandemic but with no mention of it in the liner notes, so you can draw your own conclusions as to whether the “dominos" in the title bear any relation to the “falling dominos" of all the ...

Rez Abbasi: On balancing picture with music and shifting into Django mode

By FRIEDRICH KUNZMANN

To really distinguish oneself in today's vast universe of guitarists, even within the confines of jazz, more and more resembles a Sisyphus task. When so much has been said and done, a specific tone or distinctive vocabulary alone no longer suffice to set an artist apart from the crowd. It is only through the sum of ...

Take Five with Denin Koch

By AAJ STAFF

Meet Denin Koch Hailed as possessing “pristine playing, meticulous composing" and “a very personal voice deserving of attention," guitarist and composer Denin Koch has synthesized his wide and varied influences into a unique approach to jazz improvisation. He has performed with Arturo Sandoval, Pat Metheny, Branford Marsalis, Ellis Marsalis, Wycliffe Gordon, Dee Daniels, Ryan Keberle, and ...