Results for "Profile"

Article: Profile

Mary Lou Williams: Into the Zone of Music

by Jakob Baekgaard
January 23, 2023

Few musicians have embraced the entire history of jazz like Mary Lou Williams, and at the same time shaped its development compositionally and instrumentally. She brought jazz into contact with classical music and played spiritual jazz before it became hip, but she was also a treasured teacher and mentor.Mary Lou Williams was born in ...

Article: Profile

Diamond Dust: The Eccentric Genius of Jeff Beck

by Doug Collette
January 14, 2023

The man played like he had a love/hate relationship with his guitar. One moment he could be ever-so-gently coaxing bittersweet strains from the strings and the next he could very well be wringing tortuous sounds from up and down the fretboard, as often as not thanks to his instinctively savvy use of the whammy bar. It ...

Article: Profile

Taipei's Yuppy Bookstore: Retro Speakeasy Club Serves Jazz

by Doug Hall
December 28, 2022

In any city in Taiwan, small commercial spaces are the norm, from coffee shops to cafés or neighborhood restaurants—and live music venues are no different. Yet these tiny operations still manage to offer an amazing variety of selection. In a surrounding district of the capital city of Taiwan, The Yuppy Bookstore fits this mold. ...

Article: Profile

Dial H for Hitchcock

by Peter Jones
November 5, 2022

When we meet in a South London pub, tenor saxophonist Alex Hitchcock mentions that he has a rehearsal the next day with the bassist Jasper Høiby for which he needs to learn about an hour of new music. It's for one gig, which is at the weekend. “So it's in at the deep end—quite exciting." If ...

Article: Big Band in the Sky

Jerry Lee Lewis: 1935 - 2022

by C. Michael Bailey
November 3, 2022

And then there were none. The last patrician of the church of rock & roll is no more. Jerry Lee Lewis died at the age of 87 at his Nesbit home in Desoto County, Mississippi on Friday morning, October 28, 2022. Larger than life, in death, Lewis emerges a deeply ...

Article: Profile

Noah Garabedian: The Power of Patience

by John Chacona
November 2, 2022

Patience might be not the first word that you'd expect to find on the job description for a professional jazz musician, but it has been crucial to the career of bassist Noah Garabedian's career. Growing up in Berkeley, a hothouse of young jazz talent, Garabedian never intended to become a working musician. “I definitely ...

Article: Big Band in the Sky

Remembering Roz Corral: Doyenne Of The New York Jazz Vocal Scene

by AAJ Staff
October 21, 2022

The New York jazz community lost a beloved member with the passing of vocalist Roz Corral, who died Tuesday, September 27, at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City. Originally from Marin County, CA, Roz moved to New York as a young adult, with plans to be a professional dancer. Instead, she found herself singing at ...

Article: Profile

Paolo Fresu: When Musician Turns Poet

by Nathalie Tamara Freson
October 2, 2022

Paolo Fresu—a multidimensional artist whose creative overdrive has shaped the Italian jazz scene for almost forty years. With definite hints to Chet Baker and Miles Davis, Fresu has honed a particularly mellow, velvety sound which is absolutely compelling. Even when he tackles coarser, more upbeat tempos, he captivates his listeners with his original approach, switching between ...

Article: Profile

Stephen Philip Harvey: Big Band Superhero In the Making

by John Chacona
July 6, 2022

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 ...

Article: Profile

Barbara Carroll: Barbara’s Piano

by Jakob Baekgaard
July 3, 2022

Every record is a moment in time, but also a musical portrait of the artist who creates it. When Barbara Carroll released the Verve album, Barbara, in 1958, it would mark a watershed moment in her personal and musical life. Her husband and close collaborator, bassist Joe Shulman, died of a heart attack the same year ...