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Lafayette Gilchrist: Now
by Ian Patterson
For much of the 2010s, Baltimore-based pianist/composer Lafayette Gilchrist has looked to larger ensembles to give voice to his expansive arrangements. In fact, you have to go back to Three (Hyena, 2007) to find his previous trio outing. With Now, Gilchrist embraces a more intimate setting in the company of drummer Eric Kennedy and bassist Herman ...
Jazz Musician of the Day: Thelonious Monk
All About Jazz is celebrating Thelonious Monk's birthday today! With the arrival Thelonious Sphere Monk, modern music— let alone modern culture—simply hasn’t been the same. Recognized as one of the most inventive pianists of any musical genre, Monk achieved a startlingly original sound that even his most devoted followers have been unable to successfully imitate. His ...
Gigi Gryce
by AAJ Staff
From the 1995-2003 archive: This article first appeared at All About Jazz in 2002. Gigi Gryce was a special kind of musician—the kind often overlooked by the mainstream jazz world today, but widely respected by those familiar with his all too brief time under the jazz spotlight of the 1950s. More often rated as ...
Chet Baker: An Alternative Top Ten Albums To Get Lost In
by Chris May
Chet Baker was born to a farmer's daughter and a hard-drinking, weed-smoking singer and guitarist in a Western Swing band in Yale, Oklahoma in 1929. Like many Okies, the family fared badly during the Great Depression but did a little better after moving to Glendale, California in 1939. Largely self-taught as a trumpeter, Baker honed his ...
Thelonious Monk: Palo Alto
There are no bad recordings of pianist Thelonious Monk together with tenor saxophonist Charlie Rouse. Well, maybe two—when they were in a top-notch group assembled in the late 1940s to back a so-so vocalist named Frankie Passions, who recorded two lackluster pop songs. But starting in the fall of 1958, at New York's Five Spot, they ...
Richie Beirach: Exploring Who Matters Most Among the Jazz Pianists
by Victor L. Schermer
[The following is a commentary on pianist Richie Beirach's 2020 e-book The Historical Lineage of Modern Jazz Piano: The 10 Essential Players (Conversations between Richie Beirach and Michael Lake), downloadable for free here.] Jazz piano has always garnered (no intended reference to Erroll Garner) special interest among the instruments because it is truly an ...
One Lineup, Two Approaches
by Jerome Wilson
These two releases have the same instrumental lineup, a jazz quintet fronted by saxophone and trumpet plus a string quartet. They even use the same trumpet player, Michael Rodriguez. However the two CDs take this formation down different paths. Brian Landrus For Now Blueland 2020 Baritone ...
Thelonious Monk: Palo Alto
by Mike Jurkovic
Earth-shattering? The best live Thelonious Monk recording ever? Who knows? Probably not. But it is Monk, so Palo Alto, comes to us with all the scholarly fandom brouhaha we accord these wonderful little things that gratefully drop in our laps from troubled time to troubled time. For anyone not paying attention to the jazz ...
Great Young Singers - Cécile McLorin Salvant, Charenee Wade, Jazzmeia Horn, Veronica Swift
by Russell Perry
In 1987, the first Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz International Piano Competition was held. Among the winners were Marcus Roberts and Joey DeFrancesco. On a roughly annual basis, the competition is held, now focussing on a different instrument each year and renamed in 2019 the Herbie Hancock Institute of Jazz International Competition. The competitions in 2010 ...
Charlie Parker: Ten High Flying Albums Of Paradigm Shifting Genius
by Chris May
Born in Kansas City, Kansas in 1920, and brought up across the state line in anything-goes, jazz-friendly Kansas City, Missouri, controlled from the mid 1920s to the late 1930s by the spectacularly corrupt politician Tom Prendergast, alto saxophonist Charlie Parker lived fast and hard and passed in 1955, aged only 34 years. A founding father of ...
