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Sylwester Ostrowski: Music As A Celebration Of Life
by Emmanuel Di Tommaso
Polish saxophonist Sylwester Ostrowski is not only a brilliant musician and producer, but an equally successful cultural promoter. In particular, he is the founder and organizer of the Szczecin Jazz Festival, a celebrated festival he organizes in his native city. As soon as he hit the road after the hiatus forced by the pandemic, we had ...
Jazz Musician of the Day: Lester Young
All About Jazz is celebrating Lester Young's birthday today! 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 ...
Immanuel Wilkins: Omega is Just the Beginning
by Mark Robbins and Derrick Lucas
Saxophonist Immanuel Wilkins, in the midst of celebrating the success of his debut album Omega (Blue Note, 2020), appeared at the 2021 Newport Jazz Festival as the leader of his own band. With his band of four years, Micah Thomas on piano, bassist Daryl Johns and drummer Kweku Sumbry, Wilkins performed pieces from Omega as well ...
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 ...
