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Hard Bop: An Alternative Top Ten
by Chris May
Hard bop was the jazz centre of the world from the mid 1950s to the mid 1960s, producing many hundreds of immortal albums. Trying to whittle these down to a definitive Top Ten is fun--but it is a subjective and ultimately impossible exercise. In an attempt to dodge those hurdles, the list which ...
Results for pages tagged "Randy Weston"...
Randy Weston
Born:
After contributing six decades of musical direction and genius, Randy Weston remains one of the world's foremost pianists and composers today, a true innovator and visionary. Encompassing the vast rhythmic heritage of Africa, his global creations musically continue to inform and inspire. "Weston has the biggest sound of any jazz pianist since Ellington and Monk, as well as the richest most inventive beat," states jazz critic Stanley Crouch, "but his art is more than projection and time; it's the result of a studious and inspired intelligence...an intelligence that is creating a fresh synthesis of African elements with jazz technique". Randy Weston, born in Brooklyn, New York in 1926, didn't have to travel far to hear the early jazz giants that were to influence him
University of Toronto Jazz Orchestra: Embargo
by Jack Bowers
Talk about setting the bar high: on an album designed to showcase the talents of students in Professor Terry Promane's classes on arranging, the University of Toronto Jazz Orchestra's music director, Gordon Foote, chose to open Embargo with Rob McConnell's classic arrangement of the Billy Strayhorn warhorse, “Take the 'A' Train," thus giving the undergrads a ...
Tales of The Mystic Order of the Jazz Obsessed - Jazz Societies, Part II
by Karl Ackermann
Part 1 | Part 2 Jazz Societies, Part 1 briefly traced the preservation and interpretation of jazz from the oral history of its West African roots through academic and cultural institutions. The article included an overview of jazz societies and foundations that further the fostering of jazz education. The organizations vary in scope, size ...
The New Golden Age of Jazz Radio
by Karl Ackermann
There was the Jazz Age, and later, the Golden Age of Radio. There was no golden age of jazz radio unless one considers the brief, ten-year reign of devolution when swing music dominated the airwaves. Think about this: New York City has not had a twenty-four-hour commercial jazz radio station in over ten years; decades longer ...
Cheik Tidiane Seck: Timbuktu: The Music of Randy Weston
by Chris May
A well-intentioned tribute to the late pianist, composer and pioneer of Maghrebi jazz Randy Weston by the keyboard player Cheikh Tidiane Seck, Timbuktu: The Music of Randy Weston never really gets off the ground. Seck, whose c.v. includes spells with Mali's Super Rail Band de Bamako, Les Ambassadeurs, Salif Keita and Amadou & Mariam, and Senegal's ...
Monty Alexander: Still Rolling
by Geno Thackara
If there's one defining quality to Monty Alexander's music, it's joy. An unmistakable undercurrent of happiness has been constant across several decades, dozens of recordings and countless performances all over the world. He could be honoring classic jazz balladeers, exploring the danceable “riddims" of his native Jamaica or anything in between, and you can always hear ...
The Creative Musicians Improvisers Forum: New Haven's AACM
by Daniel Barbiero
The late 1960s through the 1970s and '80s were difficult years for jazz and jazz-derived improvised music, but they were also years that saw musicians—by necessity—respond to these difficulties with creative solutions. With first the rise and then the commercial dominance during those years of rock music and the corresponding eclipse of jazz, creative musicians in ...
Theo Croker: It's Just Black Music
by Keith Henry Brown
In a field teeming with talented young lions, the bright sound of trumpeter Theo Croker still sticks out. Grandson of the legendary jazz trumpeter Doc Cheatham, the native Floridian graduated from the Oberlin Conservatory of Music and is part of a new movement of emerging jazz artists who expertly incorporate hip hop, electronic and R&B elements ...
Omar Sosa: Building Bridges Not Walls
by Duncan Heining
Cuban-born pianist, Omar Sosa is a passionate man. Music, religion, family, his relationship to the planet—all these are inseparable to an artist whose musical world is steeped in the Afro-Cuban heritage that he draws upon so personally and individually in his work. Spinning culinary metaphors to describe the processes of music-making, he sings the praises of ...
