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Results for "Thelonious Monk"
Noah Preminger Quartet, Boston, February 23
by Gordon Marshall
Noah PremingerScullers Jazz ClubBoston, Mass.February 23, 2011 To judge by his sophomore effort, Before the Rain (Palmetto, 2011), tenor saxophonist Noah Preminger's singular forte is the reinvention of the ballad. He does it so well, and so nearly exclusively, that it came as a pleasant surprise, during his performance at Scullers ...
Thelonious Monk: Let's Cool One
One of my favorite Thelonious Monk sessions took place on May 30, 1952, his last for Blue Note Records. There's a slippery urgency to the pianist's playing on this date, and the sidemen are both bluesy and martini dry. Joining Monk was Kenny Dorham (trumpet), Lou Donaldson (alto sax), Lucky Thompson (tenor sax), Nelson Boyd (bass) ...
Kit Downes Trio: Quiet Tiger
by Bruce Lindsay
The Kit Downes Trio's first album, Golden (Basho Records, 2009), won a Mercury Music Prize nomination and put the group firmly at the forefront of British jazz. Quiet Tiger finds the Trio eager to move forward, redefining its sound. Not content to rest on the laurels garnered by Golden, pianist and composer Downes has augmented the ...
Roberta Piket: Sides, Colors
by Victor L. Schermer
Roberta Piket Sides, ColorsThirteenth Note Records2011 Roberta Piket is a pianist with rich musical abilities who is making a name for herself as one of the best of her generation of keyboard players. Her 2011 release, Sides, Colors is a well-conceived recording, using her trio supplemented by strings and ...
Roberta Piket: Making a Difference
by Victor L. Schermer
Roberta Piket is a jazz pianist, composer, and arranger with an exceptional range of expression. In the same tune or performance, she moves fluidly between bebop, hard bop, blues, soft and mellow, up-tempo, contrapuntal, and advanced harmonic motifs, making it all come together in meaningful, coherent statements of ideas and emotions. She thinks hard when she ...
Benjamin Drazen: Inner Flights
by Dan Bilawsky
The peaceful, John Lennon-like face on the cover of Inner Flights is merely a mask. Behind that calm exterior is a musician with killer instincts and serious chops. Sure, saxophonist Benjamin Drazen can be calm and graceful when he wants to, as he is on Inner Flights' closing track, Polka Dots And Moonbeams," but more often ...
Marty Williams: Long Time Comin'
by C. Michael Bailey
Bay Area fixture Marty Williams does not have a pretty singing voice. It doesn't need to be because it is a commanding one--readily identifiable, friendly, accessible and honest. and worth much more than being pretty. Doubly talented, Williams has a piano style right out of the righteous songbook of Junior Mance, Les McCann, and Gene Harris, ...
Fred Hersch: Alone At The Vanguard
by Dan Bilawsky
Creating an album title--Alone At The Vanguard--that reads as a double entendre and an oxymoron--whether intentional or not--is a great achievement, but not nearly as impressive as the music that pianist Fred Hersch presents on this live recording. While the Vanguard in the title is a direct reference to the hallowed basement club in New York ...
Mark Weinstein: Jazz Brasil
by Edward Blanco
Flautist Mark Weinstein has been a major force in the Latin jazz genre for some time, releasing projects almost yearly. Though the body of his discography falls squarely within the Afro-Cuban form which remains his passion, he has slowly gravitated towards the Brazilian sound, releasing three Brazilian-style projects, for Jazzheads, since 2005. On Jazz Brasil, Weinstein ...
Abdullah Ibrahim & Ekaya: Sotho Blue
by Dan McClenaghan
The pianist's name was Dollar Brand. He came out of a nascent South African jazz scene in 1959 with The Jazz Epistles, a group that included trumpeter Hugh Masekela. Though his profile has never reached Masekela-like heights--the trumpeter's fame shot sky high with a huge number one pop chart hit in 1968, Grazin' in the Grass"--Dollar ...

