Home » Search Center » Results: Profiles
Results for "Profiles"
Jim Ridl: Garden State Improviser
by AAJ Staff
Deciphering the network of Philly-area jazz musicians is a difficult thing. However, pianist Jim Ridl stands out as a local musician whose eloquent musical statements grab audience attention in a heartbeat, whether he’s playing with his own trio or as a sideman. He has played with one of Philly’s most famous, Pat Martino, for more than ...
Saxophonist Ben Schachter Pursues his Musical Vision
by Tony Rogers
He’s wowed critics and clubgoers, won fellowships and magazine polls. He’s recorded two CDs as a leader and has two more on the way. But like so many jazz musicians before him, Philly-area tenor saxophonist and composer Ben Schachter has yet to land a contract with a major record label. It hasn’t stopped him. Told he ...
Buell Neidlinger: From Taylor to Zappa to the Carpenters
by Clifford Allen
Bassist Buell Neidlinger, born March 2, 1936, has had in many respects a genre-defying career. A child prodigy on cello, Buell graduated to bass and playing Dixieland in New York during the early ‘50s. It wasn’t long, however, before he joined the bass chair of the first Cecil Taylor quartet (including soprano saxophonist Steve Lacy and ...
Dr. Lonnie Smith: The Doctor is In...
by Terrell Kent Holmes
Dr. Lonnie Smith, a pillar in the jazz pantheon, is one of the most influential organists to ever man the helm of the Hammond B-3, an instrument he refers to paradoxically as both “the monster" and “the love of my life". His dynamic playing and prolific composing is featured on over 70 recordings, and he has ...
Mario Pavone
by Celeste Sunderland
Bassist Mario Pavone holds a picture up to the light. It looks like a collage of geometric graphics, with strong hues, shadows, and text. “You won't notice a guy standing here," he says, rotating the picture. “It's our driver in Europe. This is a performance space in Munich, and this is our driver but you would ...
Jimmy Giuffre: Cry Freedom
by Rex Butters
It’s Jimmy Giuffre’s birthday. An unseasonable snow covers the ground around the converted old New England stone polishing mill that he and his wife Juanita have called home for 26 years. The 82 year old multi reed player and iconoclast listens to piano works by Villa Lobos and Ravel, birthday presents from friends. A restless explorer ...
Michael Blake
by AAJ Staff
Submitted on behalf of Sean Patrick Fitzell With his eyebrows tightly knit, saxophonist Michael Blake played with intensity and assurance, absorbed in the musical moment he created at a recent gig. True to the group's name, Free Association, he led it through the new composition “Conquistador", based on an old Chico Hamilton vamp, ...
Samo
by Javier AQ Ortiz
Brandishing an Ibañez AF-200 guitar, which he describes as “a similar model as the AS-200, which John Scofield uses, but with a thicker body,” Samo Šalamon stirs up freeing jazz from Slovenia. As one of the most notable emerging careers from that centrally located European country, youthful daring unmasks someone who can play as ...
Dave Holland's Opus
by Clifford Allen
Bassist and composer Dave Holland has led a 35-year career that many musicians would find enviable: working with Miles Davis' iconoclastic electric ensembles of the late '60s and early '70s; following that up with Chick Corea and Anthony Braxton in the cooperative ensemble Circle; making his first date as a leader with Braxton and Sam Rivers ...
Saxophonist Dave Schnitter
by Russ Musto
David Schnitter is the jazz world's forgotten messenger, a marvelous musician who just happened to be in the right place right before the right time. The 55 year old tenor saxophonist has yet to receive the recognition he deserves as a central figure in the reorganization and resurgence Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers underwent during the '70s, ...
