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Bill Evans: Ten Essential Sideman Albums
by Chris May
Bill Evans attracts a special sort of fan. Clinically obsessive is a reasonable description. While far from undiscerning, we find something, usually plenty, to enjoy in every record Evans played on. And we want them all in our collection. Evans' hardcore fans include practically every musician who played with him. Eddie Gomez, his ...
Brendan Lanighan Octet: A Little Optimism
by Jack Bowers
A Little Optimism, trombonist Brendan Lanighan believes, can often go a long way. That is the essential message of the Lanighan Octet's debut recording, a pleasurable pastiche of original compositions by the Buffalo, NY-born trombonist plus a pair of enduring standards that share a springtime theme and the name Richard Rodgers as composer. ...
Wayne Escoffery: Still Forging Ahead
by R.J. DeLuke
Saxophonist Wayne Escoffery has a long, ongoing association with the Mingus Big Band organization, including a Grammy for Mingus Big Band Live at Jazz Standard (Jazz Workshop, Inc., Sue Mingus Music, 2010). His career also includes a special relationship with trumpeter Tom Harrell, with whom he has played for many years. All that is enough to ...
Birth of the Cool at 75: A Philadelphia Premiere at the Clef Club
by Victor L. Schermer
Orchestra 2001 Philadelphia Clef Club of Jazz and Performing Arts Birth of the Cool: A Philly Premiere, 75 Years Later Philadelphia, PA March 29, 2023 The advanced publicity for this exciting historically-based concert must have hit the pleasure centers of many fans, as it sold out on the second ...
Bob Perkins: The Art of Listening
by Victor L. Schermer
This article was first published in November 2009. Bob is without a doubt an NEA Jazz Master. Please nominate him for an NEA Jazz Masters Fellowship. “It's BP with the GM!" That's how the famed and venerable jazz disc jockey Bob Perkins signs on the air, with the code for “Bob Perkins with the ...
Wycliffe Gordon: What You Dealin' With?
by C. Andrew Hovan
Privy to the entire history of jazz trombone via the technological age in which we live, Wycliffe Gordon seems to have utilized this information in such a way that his own playing displays elements from various periods and a technical competence that is indeed remarkable. “I was most familiar, at first, with guys who played with ...
Steve Davis: Systems Blue
by C. Andrew Hovan
From Kid Ory to Roswell Rudd, the role of the trombone has changed dramatically over the brief span of jazz history, as we know it. Whether it be keeping a beat via the style of “tailgating," exploring a multitude of textural possibilities through the challenges of the avant-garde, or working somewhere in that middle ground that ...
Jazz Musician of the Day: J.J. Johnson
All About Jazz is celebrating J.J. Johnson's birthday today! Considered by many to be the finest jazz trombonist of all time, J.J. Johnson somehow transferred the innovations of Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie to his more awkward instrument, playing with such speed and deceptive ease that at one time some listeners assumed he was playing valve ...
Bop Masters Pay Tribute to Bird
In Westerns, they're cool-handed lawmen who get off the noon train to save the town with lightning-fast reflexes and not a flick of apprehension. The equivalent in the Land of Oo-Bla-Dee were these guys, who appeared on the U.K.'s BBC2's TV showcase Jazz 625 in October 1964: trombonist J.J. Johnson, alto saxophonist Sonny Stitt, trumpeter Howard ...
Horace Silver: His Only Mistake Was To Smile
by Chris May
In his sleeve note for the audio restored Horace Silver album Live New York Revisited (ezz-thetics, 2022), British writer Brian Morton cut to the chase. “[Silver]'s only mistake," he wrote, “was to smile while he was playing... a challenge to the notion that jazz should be deadly serious and played with a pained rictus."
