Concert Reviews (851)
Nothing beats experiencing live jazz music as its being created right in front of you. Stop here for reviews of your favorite jazz artists live and in concert.
I recently moved to Chicago to further my career in journalism -that is, I have an internship at a magazine called the Chicago Reporter (http://www.chicagoreporter.com) and figured (grin) that as long as I am here I might as well as enjoy the great music that this city has been producing for so many years (grin). Nobody personifies Chicago jazz better than Fred Anderson. Now 73, Anderson has been playing music for sixty years during the tenure 12 presidents -only two of which have blood relative
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Saxophonist/composer Edward Wilkerson, Jr. is one of the most prolific members of Chicago's Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM). His work touches upon styles as diverse as Ellington's "jungle music" of the twenties, hard bop, New Orleans ragtime, sixties avant-garde, orchestral composition, and an optimistic view toward the future of jazz. All of this is infused with a wonderful sense of humor and joy that even first-time listeners of his music can notice. Like Ellington
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Sometimes when two musicians meet, their personalities and musical communications meld in such a way that the friendship lasts a lifetime. John Abercrombie and Andy LaVerne met about 35 years ago as students at the Berklee College of Music. Both have gone on to find separate success, but the jazz guitar and piano duo always finds time to express their musical language together. Last Friday (Feb 9) as part of the Wooster School Jazz Society's monthly jazz nights, Abercrombie and LaVerne transform
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T'is the most tender of magical moments that I am happy to witness, why I doth not know. And sometimes who too, as I mistook Elton Dean for Tony Levin at the Jazz Cafe. But smiles or not, I cannot write the whole experience of listening to Tippett, the man of classical hugs, with both his line ups. But tomorrow, I will get my daughterthing to read me my notes about her uncle Keith and company. Nothing more now, except to say that there is nothing more impressive than listening to the cream i
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The Brad Mehldau Trio - Mehldau (piano), Larry Grenadier (bass), Jorge Rossy (drums) - has been heralded as the new breed of piano trio and acclaimed for its unique simpatico. A recent stop at Seattle's premier jazz club, Dimitrou's Jazz Alley, showed why the young group is so highly regarded but left room for growth. Mehldau has been regarded as the classic post-modern pianist - rough and ready and known for a combative edge and punk aloofness. There's more than a bit of the young Keith Jar
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Opening the 12th season of the Magic Triangle Music Series at UMass/Amherst was the first performance outside of New York City of William Parker's Little Huey Creative Music Orchestra. This group was put together in 1994 in tribute to the "dreamers" of our world: those who mindfully and naturally create beautiful expressions of their souls. The program consisted of four numbers, all Parker's compositions/conceptions/inspirations. Each piece had a story behind it, which fact is so instinctual
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Gaining momentum and now in it's second year, the brainchild of promoters Thompson, Parrish and Paddock (better known as The Oasis Group, LLC) took Chicago by storm bringing with it the hottest names in Smooth Jazz all under one beautiful roof. The Second Annual National Smooth Jazz Awards, presented to a sold out audience of better than 3,500 delivered an evening of more than nineteen hot hits performed by the original artists and well-deserved awards and honors to some of the genres greatest.
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The Gnawa musicians of Morocco are a fascinating group of players. Their music is not merely meant to entertain, but to heal. The Gnawa were brought up from sub-Saharan Africa hundreds of years ago in bondage. They are master musicians who believe that everyone has a color and a musical note to which he or she vibrates. During healing ceremonies individuals respond to their chosen color and note. Ultimately the goal of the Gnawa is to play every note perfectly lest a wrong note adversely aff
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The concept of blending jazz and Latin music is not a new thing. The two styles have been borrowing each other since the 1920's. Rare, however, is the musician or band that is equally versed in both styles. When trumpeter and conga player Jerry Gonzalez formed his Fort Apache Band nearly twenty years ago his ability to blend the two styles in equal measure turned heads and has since had a gigantic effect on jazz, one not fully realized until the arrival of Danilo Perez and David Sanchez as b
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For many people new to jazz their first exposure to Sonny Rollins was the image of him practicing his saxophone on New York's Williamsburg Bridge in 1958, lovingly documented in Ken Burns' recent "Jazz". No mention was given of the legacy Rollins has built upon since then. A consummate perfectionist with a well of imagination that is seemingly bottomless, Rollins has stayed on top of his game for decades thanks largely to a rigorous practice routine. As a result, Rollins sounds as vital and
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It's never a good sign when you roll up on the theatre where a favorite musician is scheduled to perform and you see something dreadful on the marquee. No, not "cancelled." Much worse than that, though after a jarring trek over a pothole-riddled interstate a cancelled show would be a major depressant. No, some idiot has actually misspelled the name of one of the performers. The marquee outside the Royal Oak Theatre in the Detroit suburb of Royal Oak announced: "Tonight at 9:00 - Bob Jame
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Friday, the thirteenth of April, in Boston, at the Institute of Contemporary Art, was another performance within the Boston Creative Music Alliance of DIE LIKE A DOG TRIO with guest Joe McPhee. The trio is Peter Brotzmann, reeds, Hamid Drake, drums and William Parker, bass. Brotzmann played the taragato whose tones automatically lend to the music a sound of the world. He broke the silence of waiting for the music to begin with a line that resembled a call of the wild. Parker sat as he fingere
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On April 12th, the UMass/Amherst Magic Triangle Series concluded its 12th season with a special performance by Yusef Lateef in a quintet that included Chicago sax man Von Freeman, pianist Alex Marcelo, drummer Kamal Sabir and bass guitarist Tim Dahl. This was a once in a lifetime concert to honor Dr. Lateef in his 80th year. His musical life has been rich. Much of it has been spent in the UMass area and his vast contributions have been recognized to the extent of a having resolution authored
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The name Toots Thielemans is synonymous with jazz harmonica. This is true partly because there are so few practitioners but mostly because of the degree to which he has mastered the instrument. If you have never heard Toots before you may wonder how he does it. It is difficult to imagine jazz harmonica, the instrument not seeming to lend itself to jazz. Until you hear Toots, that is. When he puts the harmonica to his lips, it's magic. He has a deep respect for the music that comes across in his
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Last Thursday night at Flywheel in Easthampton, MA. performed a trio including Marco Eneidi on alto, Spirit on percussion and drums, and Jessica Loos doing vocals. This group is creative, well appointed, conceptually rich. And excellent. Once, in a conversation Morton Feldman was having with another composer about a piece that Feldman was writing for voice and orchestra, I interjected the question to Feldman : "Well, Morty, when does the voice become an instrument?" His reply was: "That is a
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After the band vamp (as if for a stripper's entrance) and Birdland's announcement, "The Prince of Hi-De-Ho, Calloway Brooks", a tall lean gent jumped on stage to front the mostly hatted variously attired twelve member ensemble wearing a long white coat to his knees, white high draped pants over black & whites, a pheasant feathered white wide-brimmed hat and matching red deco clipped tie. He's a sight and when he extends his long arms and opens his mustachioed mouth flashes of his Grandfathers' v
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Part of the Impulse Response Series at the iEAR studio at RPI in Troy, New York, a performance with Joe McPhee, Philip Gelb, dancer, Eri Majima, and the group, Nyquist, brought a studio space, heavily laden with black velvet curtains and every other sort of absorptive material, to life. Both Gelb and McPhee played by themselves to begin the concert and then joined to accompany dancer Majima. Nyquist, which includes Seth Cluett, Scott Smallwood, and Joel Taylor, were also joined by Gelb and M
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The incomparable Danilo Perez, the Cultural Ambassador to his native Panama, showed why he has earned that title. Enriching the audience with a story about the concept of America and what it means to different people provided a nice complement to the opening Suite for the Americas. A well-conceived piece with diverse influences, this gave the audience a good taste of what was to come over two sets of energetic, creative celebration. Nigerian-born Essiet Essiet did some very imaginative bass
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Bill Bruford has always been a jazz drummer at heart. It showed on those early YES records, with such songs as 'America', 'Something's Coming', and 'Everydays'. With the latest edition of his band, Earthworks, he brings that to the fore. While many in the packed crowd came to see him based on his reputation with such bands as King Crimson and his 70's rock/fusion band, Bruford, they were in for a pleasant surprise with his current 'British jazz' quartet. This was the sixth date on a 16 date coas
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It's a ritual. Each and every year we await a most longed-for event: Spring, and only secondarily, we wait for it to roll over into Summer in all its temperature-raising glory. And each and every year since I've lived in Vancouver I go through a personal ritual directly related to the weather. I forget what June can be like. That June can be cruelly, unseasonably chilly and even rainy. I think it's a mental block and there's only one thing that could make a jazz fan forget the unpredictability o
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The Art Ensemble of Chicago was one of those rare bands that would have come together regardless of the musical climate that necessitated its formation, so powerful was the attraction between the musicians. But they did form primarily due to the jazz scene depleting in 1960's Chicago, the advent of rock and roll, and then fostered by the encouragement of the then-fledgling musical collective, the Association for the Advancement of Creative Artists (AACM). Depending on whom one might talk to
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The 21st Annual Mellon Jazz Festival produced by the Central Pennsylvania Friends of Jazz got off to a flying start the weekend of June 15 in capital city, Harrisburg, PA. The 3-day event centered at the Hilton Hotel drew hundreds of jazz enthusiasts where headliners and local jazz musicians satisfied every jazz appetite. While the Hilton was central to the weekend festivities, the whole city supported this year's tribute to Louis Armstrong with a Jazz Walk-a-thon at 15 sites, all within walking
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Now in its 16th year, the Vancouver International Jazz Festival is well established as one of the West's premium music forums and one of the finest international music showcases in the world. For ten days, the VIJF offers the sights and sounds of the music's edge pushers, mainstayers and international ambassadors in a panoramic city sweep that keeps the focus on the music amid the vitality of Canada's West Coast urban cultural Mecca. That's as it should be. Yet in a city as stunning as Vanco
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The term "super group" may be overused, but a true all-star quartet hit the stage in Milwaukee this past Thursday night. On the third date of their inaugural fourteen date midwest-eastcoast tour, the quartet known as CAB (drummer Dennis Chambers, guitarist Tony McAlpine, bassist Bunny Brunel, and keyboardist Brian Auger) laid down two sets of intense instrumental fusion. With a sound that harked back to the glory days of fusion in the seventies, they thrilled the packed house with their instrume
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Now in its 24th year of existence the Atlanta Jazz Festival signals the beginning of the summer jazz festival season for this writer. The AJF always features a variety of local and international performers from most genres of jazz. Even though the free admission Memorial Day weekend concert series is the major part of the festival, there were several other free and paid performances held over a 9-day period throughout the Atlanta area. This year a second stage, reserved for emerging artists,
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