Like many other jazz musicians, I am fortunate enough to travel all over the globe and present this wonderful music. While I haven't been playing professionally for an extremely long time--only about 15 years--during those years I have seen quite a bit of change in the world and on the jazz scene. Not that it compares ...

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Article: Album Review

Oscar Feldman: Oscar e Familia

Read "Oscar e Familia" reviewed by Raul d'Gama Rose

by Raul d'Gama Rose
December 14, 2009

Oscar Feldman is ready, with Oscar e Familia, to put his own stamp on the alto saxophone. Not since the fire of Jackie McLean, the cool breeze of Lee Konitz, Eric Dolphy's rhythmic advances, Ornette Coleman's Harmolodic theories, and Steve Coleman's mBase concepts, has someone attempted to create a new language for that instrument. True, Charlie ...

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Article: Album Review

Uwe Oberg / Christof Thewes / Michael Griener: Lacy Pool

Read "Lacy Pool" reviewed by Mark Corroto

by Mark Corroto
December 7, 2009

Lacy Pool, by pianist Uwe Oberg, drummer Michael Griener, and trombonist Christof Thewes, demonstrates the “circles within a circle" puzzle that mathematicians have riddled over for centuries. The piano covers of soprano saxophonist Steve Lacy's compositions were accomplished without the use of a saxophone, much like Lacy's interpretations of Thelonious Monk were made without a piano. ...

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Article: Bailey's Bundles

The State of ECM Records 2009: Steve Kuhn, Jan Garbarek and Thomas Zehetmair

by C. Michael Bailey
November 10, 2009

Its 40th anniversary year, 2009, has been a good one for Manfred Eicher's Edition of Contemporary Music Company. ECM was selected the Best Classical Label by Gramophone magazine. If that wasn't enough, ECM was selected Jazz Label of the Year and Manfred Eicher, Producer of the Year by Downbeat magazine. No record label since the Blue ...

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Article: Big Band Caravan

Chuck Owen & the Jazz Surge / Swiss Jazz Orchestra / The Aggregation

by Jack Bowers
October 1, 2009

Chuck Owen & the Jazz Surge The Comet's Tail MAMA Records 2009 On The Comet's Tail, Chuck Owen's superb Florida-based Jazz Surge performs the compositions--yes, compositions--of the late great tenor saxophonist Michael Brecker. As Owen writes in the liner notes, “[Michael's] blinding brilliance as a performer / improviser...may ...

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Article: Profile

How Jazz May Have Influenced The Beatles

by AAJ Staff
September 30, 2009

Introduction A publication from the French general knowledge “Tu Sais..." book series ("You Know..."), entitled “Tu Sais... Jazz," contains a final chapter on rock bands such as The Beatles and The Rolling Stones. It states that both the Beatles and the Stones “knew and loved old jazz and blues." From Paul McCartney's long familiarization with George ...

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Article: From Far and Wide

Join #jazzlives and Show 'em!

by Fradley Garner
September 25, 2009

WITH THE JAZZ PUBLIC “SHRINKING," a new group of activists formed a “#jazzlives" campaign on Twitter to buck the trend. Surveys by the National Endowment for the Arts picture jazz being viewed by ever more Americans as a high-culture art form, like classical music. Fewer are hearing it live than at any time since the late ...