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Here's To The Ladies: Barbara Carroll, Gabriele Tranchina and Monica Mancini
by Nick Catalano
I've had a chance to listen to recent CDs that have come in from various chanteuses and the music has been truly rewarding. Barbara Carroll is one of the true legends in jazz and her octogenarian years are being spent keeping an amazingly busy schedule. On Sunday afternoons she holds court at The Algonquin with Jay ...
Pizzarelli / Ellington: Rockin' In Rhythm
by Nick Catalano
John Pizzarelli unveiled the contents of his new Telarc CD John Pizzarelli Rockin' In Rhythm: A Tribute to Duke Ellington at Birdland recently and the result was a musical explosion. It is easy to become bored with the plethora of “tribute" CDs issued almost every week these days, but this effort is truly something special. From ...
Italian Jazz: Peppe Merolla
by Nick Catalano
The international jazz scene has been a major focus in recent editions of this column. This month we turn to Italy. The emergence of Italian jazz has long been felt in the U.S. primarily through the word-of-mouth exchanges that emanate from American musicians who have worked in Italian jazz festivals such as those in Umbria, Pisa ...
Copenhagen JazzHouse: The Evolution of a Jazz Club
by Nick Catalano
On a recent visit to Denmark I was able to spend a couple of evenings at the Copenhagen JazzHouse and digest some of the cutting edge ideas of the club's artistic director composer/ bassist Lennart Ginman. Years ago I had initially encountered the Danish jazz scene at Cafe Monmartre and found it thriving as Thad Jones ...
Torrie Zito: A Retrospective
by Nick Catalano
The extraordinary career of composer/arranger/pianist Torrie Zito provides an opportunity to reconsider the criteria by which we evaluate musical achievement. Because Zito attained his heights primarily as an orchestra writer, scholars need to examine his achievements alongside those of Ravel, Debussy and Faure who received plaudits for their work as classical composers. And although Zito created ...
The London Jazz Festival
by Nick Catalano
A fitting climax to my stay here in London was the jazz festival which has become something of a major classic. Most Americans don't realize it, but someone figured out that there are about 800 jazz fests annually in Europe and, if that is true, then the London festival should rank near the top in quality ...
The Revival of Gypsy Jazz
by Nick Catalano
I took note of the revival of “Gypsy jazz" sounds when I reviewed CDs by the Hot Clubs of Detroit and San Francisco in this column last year. I have often attended the Django Reinhardt festivals at Birdland and monitored the “invasion" of large numbers of French musicians at concerts in New Orleans and other cities. ...
The London Scene
by Nick Catalano
Traveling around Europe these days researching my next book has brought me to London town once again. The jazz scene is thriving here with a plethora of clubs and concerts and an impressive lineup for the upcoming London Jazz Festival. Of course, the clubs put forth legions of U.K. musicians, but I'm detecting an interesting migration ...
Ladies From Afar
by Nick Catalano
This month we celebrate the ever-increasing expansion of jazz overseas, particularly two foreign women who, for different reasons, have captured the jazz spirit: Roberta Gambarini from Torino, Italy and Amina Figarova from Baku, Aserbaijan. Gambarini arrived in New York not long ago and immediately jumped into the Gotham jazz scene, sharing the stage with ...
Icons Among Us: An Epic Jazz Documentary, Part 2
by Nick Catalano
Part 1 | Part 2 This seminal documentary continues on the second CD with a scene straight out of a typical Gotham jazz collaboration: singer Gretchen Parlato and pianist Aaron Parks are together in a NYC apartment working out a vocal arrangement. Gretchen is heard commenting on the vagaries of jazz singing and the ...
