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Mostly Other People Do the Killing: Slippery Rock
by Eyal Hareuveni
Mostly Other Peopele Do the Killing is back! And with it the rightly slandered genre of smooth jazz. This quintet's fifth studio album was penned by MOPDtK bassist Moppa Elliot after a lengthy immersion in the smooth jazz recordings of the late 1970s and '80s. Elliott extracted certain idiomatic phrases, harmonies and embellishments from this superficial ...
Mostly Other People Do the Killing: Setting the Record Straight
by Troy Collins
Mostly Other People Do the Killing is frequently typecast as one of today's most humorously irreverent young jazz groups, based in no small part on their provocative name, which was inspired by a quote attributed to inventor Leon Theremin--a survivor of the Soviet gulag who exonerated Stalin because “mostly other people did the killing." Bassist and ...
Davey Payne: Ready To Play
by Sammy Stein
Davey Payne is known best for the time when he was saxophonist with British group, The Blockheads. His solo on the 1978 number 1 hit, “Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick" was the first time a double sax solo had appeared on a hit record. Before he joined forces with Dury, who fronted The ...
Best of 2012
by Mr. P.C.
Dear Mr. P.C.:I've noticed that when a lot of the younger groups rearrange a standard or pop song, they take out a beat here and there. It keeps me off guard and if I don't count I lose track of the downbeat. But that's fine. What I'm wondering is: Where do those beats go?
Free Form Evolution
by Sammy Stein
Since free form tentatively emerged during the 1940s and '50s it has evolved with both the times and changing audiences. Now, free form elements cross genre boundaries and many musicians use elements from free form in their works. Because it is music which draws on the spiritual feelings of the players, social dramas and the atmosphere ...
May 2012
by Mr. P.C.
Dear Mr. P.C.: I am a jazz vocalist. When I am on a gig, is it OK to request that the bassist play arco on a solo, or should that be entirely up to his discretion? I hope you can help me. I don't want to make a dumb singer mistake here. ...
Esperanza Spalding: Radio Music Society
by Jeff Winbush
When you've been invited to perform for the President of the United States, turned heads as the bass-playing beauty in the Academy Awards house band, toured with Prince and beat out teen dream Justin Bieber for the Grammy Award for Best New Artist, you're having a very good run in the spotlight--and it could turn your ...
Steve Coleman: Symbols and Language
by Ian Patterson
Saxophonist Steve Coleman's The Mancy of Sound (Pi Recordings, 2011) was one of the records of 2011. Thematically and structurally challenging on the one hand, dynamic and funky on the other, the music's contrasts reflect Coleman's view of the world, in all its complexity and simplicity. Coleman's fierce intellect carries simple logic, wrapped in many-layered waves ...
What is Jazz? Good Question...
by Jason West
What is jazz? According to Wynton Marsalis jazz is music that swings. According to Pat Metheny jazz is not the music of Kenny G. According to Webster's jazz is characterized by propulsive syncopated rhythms, polyphonic ensemble playing, varying degrees of improvisation, and often deliberate distortions of pitch and timbre. Personally, I prefer the definition found in ...
Take Five With Joyce Spencer
by AAJ Staff
Meet Joyce Spencer:A native of South Louisiana, Joyce Spencer began playing the clarinet in 5th grade, but switched to tenor saxophone in the 12th. During this time, her musical influence included blues, jazz, zydeco, gospel, classical and R&B. She later included the alto sax and flute at McNeese State University where she received a ...
