Results for "Lester Young"
Lester Young
Born:
Lester "Prez" Young was one of the giants of the tenor saxophone. He was the greatest improviser between Coleman Hawkins and Louis Armstrong of the 1920s and Charlie Parker in the 1940s. From the beginning, he set out to be different: He had his own lingo; In the Forties, he grew his hair out. The other tenor players held their saxophones upright in front of them, so Young held his out to the side, kind of like a flute (see picture above). Then, there was the way he played: Hawkins played around harmonic runs. He played flurries of notes and had a HUGE tone that the other tenor players of the day emulated. Young used a softer tone that resulted In a soft, light sound (if you didn't know better, you would think the two were playing different instruments)
Charles Mingus: An Essential Top Ten Albums
by Chris May
Charles Mingus was rarely a happy man and yet his music possessed a power to uplift listeners unlike that of most other composer / bandleaders before or after him. It still has that power in 2021, four decades after his passing and on the eve of his hundredth anniversary in 2022. In his personal life, too, ...
A Conversation with Jackie McLean
by AAJ Staff
From the 1995-2003 archive: This article first appeared at All About Jazz in October 1998. All About Jazz: You grew up in the same neighborhood as Bud Powell. How did he impact your life? And, what was Bud Powell the man like? Jackie McLean: He certainly lived in the vicinity of my ...
Don Rendell Quintet: Space Walk
by Chris May
As British jazz reaches new and unprecedented peaks of popularity, major labels are revisiting their vaults and rereleasing artistically enduring but long unavailable albums. Universal/Decca's British Jazz Explosion: Originals Re-Cut is the most ambitious of such reissue programs to be announced so far in 2021. It concentrates on the years 1965 -1972, a pivotal period in ...
Doug MacDonald: Live in Hawaii
by Jack Bowers
Here is a guitar-led quartet with a couple of fresh angles. First, instead of using a piano, guitarist Doug MacDonald has enlisted vibraphonist Noel Okimoto to provide the harmonic counterpoint; and second, Philadelphia-born MacDonald has temporarily forsaken his decades-long base in Southern California to return “home" to Hawaii, where he began his professional career performing with ...
Paul Bley Trios: Touching & Blood Revisited
by Mark Corroto
Pianist Paul Bley (1932—2016) wasn't just a witness to jazz history, he was a key contributor. Bley performed with Lester Young, Charlie Parker, Charles Mingus, and Sonny Rollins, yet his true sound was set in motion when he performed with Ornette Coleman in California, evidenced by Live At The Hillcrest Club 1958 (America Records, 1971). While ...
Julius Hemphill: The Boyé Multi-National Crusade For Harmony
by Mark Corroto
There is something inherently objectionable when a billionaire acquires an artistic masterpiece by say, Leonardo DaVinci or Claude Monet, only to sequester it from public view. You might feel the same about Julius Hemphill's recordings Dogon A.D. (Mbari, 1972) and 'Coon Bid'ness (Arista/Freedom, 1975). Both five star recordings, now out of print, cost a small fortune ...
A Different Drummer, Part 2: Royal Hartigan
by Karl Ackermann
Drums of Life--Drums of DeathThe ruins of the Anasazi people stand undisturbed in the cliffs between the high mesas and the canyon floors of the southwest. Dating to 2500 B.C., the multi-story adobe pueblos and stone cities were the sites of the ancient indigenous peoples of North America. Archeologists have uncovered an assortment of percussion instruments ...
La Jazz Poetry di Jayne Cortez
by Maurizio Zerbo
Articolo originariamente pubblicato nel marzo 2003 e ora riproposto in occasione del mese dedicato al contributo femminile al jazz Per la sua spiccata componente di oralità, la Jazz Poetry è probabilmente l'espressione che meglio di altre connota—insieme al jazz stesso—l'esperienza artistica afroamericana del '900, in quanto trait d'union fra improvvisazione e composizione scritta.
Schapiro 17: Human Qualities
by Jack Bowers
Following its splendid premiere recording, an exploration of Miles Davis' unrivaled album Kind Of Blue (Capitol Records, 1959), composer/arranger Jon Schapiro's 17-member ensemble broadens its horizons on Human Qualities, pairing seven of the maestro's astute and adventurous charts with the Roberta Flack best-seller, “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face." This time around, Schapiro proves ...
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