Jazz News (3312)
Find out what's going on in the world of jazz through industry press releases, news stories, and staff viewpoints.
In the early '70s rock spectrum, another strange musical mutation was gathering force and would soon make a tremendous impact on rock guitar style and technique: the sound of jazz-rock. The real pioneer of early jazz-rock though was jazz trumpeter Miles Davis, who began using static rock rhythms in his recordings and allowing his musicians to stretch out with rock inflected solos. The two ground-breaking Davis' fusion recordings were 1969's "In A Silent Way" and 1970's "Bitches' Brew", both of w …
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The success of Stan Getz and Charlie Byrd's multi-cultural exchange that brought bossa nova to the attention of the 1960's public at large resulted in a double-edged sword when viewed through the glasses of hindsight. While it's true that names like Gilberto and Jobim entered the American lexicon, the music's intoxicating sense of communication lead to many copycat projects that flooded the market and ultimately diluted the entire movement's vivacity. In turn, record-buying consumers who had rea …
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The Jazz fest epitomizes everything to love about New Orleans-the music, the food, her laid back approach to life, her history and unique culture, her engrained traditions, her warm people and her party atmosphere. The New Orleans Jazz & Heritage festival maintains a remarkable balance between grassroots conservation and contemporary innovation, set in an atmosphere of sensory delight that has reached legendary proportion. Through a deft combination of traditional and cutting edge performance …
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John Coltrane's one of major tenor players in jazz history. His life and work have influenced today's modern jazz scene and his contemporaries have been studied his harmonic structure in his composition Giant Steps in order to master the harmonic complexity while attempting to create their own. The expansion of harmonic structure in Giant Steps has been studied that could point a new direction for jazz musicians who seek alternative ways to create new harmony ideas for their composition and impr …
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Fortunately for the jazz community at large, Blue Note has done a great service to its catalog by stepping up its reissues over the past five years or so. A stream of notable items continues to come our way with six new titles available as budget-priced discs and with a focus on the soulful B-3 type fare that marked the label's late '60s output. All discs also feature new 24-bit remastering. Arguably the best of the lot and one of the baddest organ groove records ever cut, Lou Donaldson's MID …
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Writing about improvised music means transcending a language barrier somewhat like, but not the same as, moving analog sound to a digital format. Each process necessitates some sort of converter. In writing about music, the converter is multileveled. The filtering begins with the ears; it is also accompanied by human sensibility, knowledge of the subject at hand, innate human penchants, and a human psychology that manifests predilections towards sound that is organized. I know that to describe m …
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While the classic Blue Notes of the '50s & '60s have been the focus of quite a few batches of reissues as of late, it's also great to see Capitol delve deeper into its own holdings, with jazz sides from the mother label and the Pacific Jazz catalog taking center stage via a half dozen new titles, all of which have been long unavailable. Included in this new series of reissues are works by drummer/bandleader Buddy Rich, alto man Cannonball Adderley, vocalist Nancy Wilson, and trumpeters Don Ellis …
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The Walnut Tree Pub and Restaurant in Yalding, Kent, UK was the venue for the first time I heard and met Barney. WHAT A PLAYER!. I had the pleasure of running him back to his hotel in London after the gig and from then on we were friends. That was a good 18 years ago. Sadly, Barney had a stroke in May 1992, but is still with us and lives in San Diego, California. I hadn't heard of Barney before the Walnut Tree and didn't know what a legend he was. But over the years I've got the full picture! Ba …
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From big band to electric fusion, the year's new releases offered a little something for every taste. In no particular order, here's a sampling of ten of the best. 1. Dave Stryker - SHADES OF MILES (SteepleChase) Conjuring the vibes set forth in such Miles Davis classics as Bitches Brew, guitarist Dave Stryker's own program for electric ensemble is in a class all its own. 2. Carla Bley - 4 X 4 (Watt/ECM) Simply put, take four horns, add a four-piece rhythm section, and …
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Cleveland's independent Telarc International, long a significant player in the classical music arena, has grown into one of the most respected jazz and blues labels in the country over the past few years, as well. The offerings below speak to their growing roster of major names in jazz.Ray Brown Trio: Some Of My Best Friends Are ... The Trumpet Players (83495)Bassist Ray Brown knows a little about working with trumpeters. He's shared stage and studio space with the likes of Dizzy Gil …
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"When you put the right note.....at the right place.....at the right time.....what do you have? A composite musical sound abode with precision, perfect spacing and timing, the right tempo, and, most important, one of the most outstanding band leaders in the history of jazz, "Count Basie and His Orchestra"..... "Swingin' the Blues".....and, "The Jazz Explosion."Basie represented the hallmark of sophisticated simplicity-elegant simplicity. He was the ornament that embellished the very roots of …
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Let me see if I have this straight. Just when 32 Jazz seemed to be making a noticeable impact on the jazz reissue market, record guru Joel Dorn jumps ship to start yet another company, namely Label M. To make things more confusing, both 32 Records and Label M seem to have their eyes on similar product from the vaults, not to mention utilizing the same black plastic digi-packs that now makes it harder than ever to distinguish between the two labels. Makes for some interesting press, wouldn't you …
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It's perfectly understandable that some confusion was bound to exist when Joel Dorn announced that he was jumping ship from 32 Records to form yet another recording enterprise. Label M has all the marks of a Dorn endeavor and while it may seem that both 32 Jazz and Label M are merely cut from the same cloth, closer inspection does reveal some notable differences. Most importantly, Dorn has acquired the rights to release many unheard concert performances drawn from the archives of the Left Bank J …
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Kazu Matsui is synonymous with American cinema music, particularly the films that feature Ry Cooder and James Horner as composers. Bursting on the scene in the early eighties with his eerie, suspense-laden accompaniment of the epic TV movie SHOGUN, he has been an ever-growing staple of action films. While he is a resident of Huntington Beach, CA, Kazu is the main proponent of his instrument, the Japanese shakuhachi flute, in the Western world. While carrying on the tradition of his mystical inst …
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The world of contemporary jazz is no stranger to great instrumentalist who collaborate on projects together. Just like the bebop and early swing eras of the past, we have a great engaging synthesis of two great artists on the same instrument with two new releases and a world tour to usher in the New Year. This January in Japan, a great tour begins with two-time Grammy winner Bob James of America and a favorite daughter of Japan, number one female contemporary jazz artist, Keiko Matsui. The new m …
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Well it’s been a few years now that the legendary recording engineer Rudy Van Gelder has been working on restoring the legacy that he’s played such a big part in. The man responsible for the larger than life sound that categorized the vast majority of Blue Note recordings from the late ‘50s to the late ‘60s, Van Gelder first started his project of remastering albums in 24-bit digital for Japan. While the American counterpart series to the Japanese is quite a bit smaller in scope, quite re …
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For the first time in at least five years, it seems that the jazz market has evened out, with few surprises and even fewer reissues when compared with the plethora of vault goodies that have seen the light of day over the past decade. Although Ken Burns’s Jazz created some momentum, marketing ploys favored the kind of compilation discs that hardcore jazzers stay away from like the plague. Nonetheless, among the slim pickings this year were the selected gems listed below, in no particular …
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This review is a bit of a departure from the norm, being a VHS , broadcast quality, video cassette rather than a CD. Several readers have written asking why traditional jazz is seldom reviewed. The simple answer is that little is submitted to me. That seems to be changing with the arrival of Mart Rodger's Manchester Jazz and the Alex Pangman CD recently featured as CD of the week. Manchester Jazz is not to be confused with the plethora of "trad" bands who frantically copy the sound of the Late G …
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No discussion of jazz would be complete without some knowledge of just where the word "jazz" came from. One of the most gifted musicians in New Orleans was saxophonist, Sidney Bechet, who played in the Noble Sissle's orchestra along with Charlie Parker in the late twenties. In his autobiography, Bechet insisted that the word jazz, in it's original form of "jass," was local slang for sexual activities. The evidence in favor of Bechet's assertion seems overwhelming; Becket's declaration is substan …
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The title is attributed to the foremost tenor saxophonists of the be-bop era, Dexter 'LTD' Gordon. On his album, American Classic, in an interview, Gordon is quoted with this phrase, "Be-bop is the music of the future." Haven made his mark as the "Sophisticated Giant" of the be-bop school, Gordon was the first musician ever to be nominated for an academy award. Gordon portrayed Dale Turner in producer, Bertrand Tavernier's, most praised jazz film of all time..."Round Midnight." About be-bop, …
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