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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 ...
Michael A. Levy: From Piano to iPad
by Jakob Baekgaard
It is a common perception that artists do their most innovative work when they are young and then gradually lose the spark of innovation in favor of a refinement of an already established artistic expression. There are, however, many artists who remain curious all their life and never stop being interested in the interplay between emerging ...
Ricky Ford: From Across the Sea
by R.J. DeLuke
Ricky Ford is a badass tenor saxophonist. Many will recall his fierce and strong playing on his Muse releases in the '80s. Others may be aware that he was a stalwart member of big bands like the Duke Ellington Orchestra under the leadership of Mercer Ellington and with Charles Mingus and later the Mingus Dynasty band. ...
Cheryl Richards: Another Spring, Another Song
by Jakob Baekgaard
It can be hard to find new things to say in old songs, but after many years of singing the standards, some singers are still able to discover the secret of a song. Cheryl Richards is a shining example of a singer who has been able to prove the relevance of the standards for a modern ...
Stephane Mercier: New Saxophone Talent
by AAJ Staff
This article was originally published at All About Jazz in December 2001. Belgian alto saxophonist Stephane Mercier tolerates no boundaries. “I listened to some cheesy things when I was young--I don't mind. If I like something, I just put it," he proclaims about his approach to music. A new talent in the jazz world, ...
Ugly Beauty: Jazz in The 21st Century
by Philip Freeman
The following is an excerpt from Chapter 1, “JD Allen: Just Keep Going" from Philip Freeman's Ugly Beauty: Jazz in The 21st Century (ZerO Books, 2022). Queens, New York seems purposely designed to confuse travelers. It's January 2, 2020, a brisk but sunny day, and I'm to meet saxophonist JD Allen at Samurai ...
I Hear a Rhapsody
by David Caudill
We put out a call to visitors to AAJ to tell us their stories about how jazz has impacted, indeed shaped their lives. David Caudill heard the call. David has lived in Cincinnati for three decades and spent a long career writing, both in journalism and for a short while in corporate communications. He ...
Stephen Philip Harvey: Big Band Superhero In the Making
by John Chacona
There's a passage in “Party Song," the concluding cut on the Stephen Philip Harvey Jazz Orchestra's debut recording, Smash! (Next Level, 2022) where the band claps hands, whoops and cheers over a syncopated praise-band saxophone riff. It's pure, unbridled joy and just like the exuberance implied by the exclamation point in the album's title, it's an ...
Camilla George At The MAC
by Ian Patterson
Camilla George The MAC Belfast, N. Ireland June 25, 2022 It was a sell-out crowd for Camilla George's Belfast gig, the penultimate stop on a ten-date tour of Ireland. In part, this no doubt reflected people's hunger for live music after the socio-cultural privations of lockdown, but above all, it ...
Oded Tzur: A Thrilling New Saxophone Colossus
by Chris May
Oded Tzur's 2020 album, Here Be Dragons, the Tel Aviv born, New York based tenor saxophonist's first release on ECM, triggered an eruption of purple prose. Critics competed to see who could convey the most enthusiasm. A few even suggested that the Tzur quartet was the inheritor of the mantle of the classic John Coltrane quartet. ...
