Jazz Artist Interviews (709)
Get up close and personal with your favorite jazz artists!
Allan Harris has an impressive musical pedigree. His mother was a classical pianist. His aunt was an opera singer turned blues performer who welcomed famed music producer Clarence Williams and jazz great Louis Armstrong to the household as dinner guests. Allan has sung the standards of the foremost jazz vocalists and performed with jazz orchestras throughout the world. His performances have been hailed as artistic, emotionally expressive and technically sound. Through his performances with Tommy …
Read more...
If one were to ask a jazz musician or serious jazz listener in Chicago about Tatsu Aoki, chances are that they're aware of the Tokyo-born bassist, who moved to Chicago in 1978 from a brief stay in New York. "It was either (Chicago) or New Orleans," Aoki said. "In New York, I couldn’t get a good read on the pulse of the city. It was either Chicago or New Orleans. I chose Chicago." Aoki is a virtual cottage industry in the Chicago music scene. He has released 28 albums as a leader or solo …
Read more...
I was mortified to see an unnamed guitarist (Mark Whitfield) on stage at an undisclosed location (The Iridium) in a major metropolitan city (New York) play some sort of instrumental pop, smooth, crossover, hybrid. What had led such a promising young musician to abandon his once true calling? After all, he (Mark Whitfield) was touted by most members of the selective media and his own label (Verve) to be the next great guitarist in jazz. The answer? Simple. It's why strippers disrobe (not that I'm …
Read more...
Through the years jazz has come to mean different things to different people, branching and rejoining itself in a myriad of styles. Here is one jazz performer defining and redefining what jazz means today. A San Jose native, who later moved to the Los Angeles area, Geissman grew up on the sounds of the Beatles, Eric Clapton, surf guitar music and later jazz/blues greats B.B. King and Kenny Burrell. Geissman was a senior at Cal State Northridge when he was recommended by a mutual friend …
Read more...
As a student enrolled in Stanford Business School, Ray Drummond could have chosen a much easier life than that of a jazz musician. The mere fact that he left school to journey down that difficult road is a testament to the bassist's love for the music. He is one of the most in-demand bassists of our time. Christian McBride may garner the publicity, but Drummond has McBride's record output beat hands down. Drummond has been featured on well over two hundred recordings. His latest as a leader has …
Read more...
Avant-garde jazz pianist Dave Franks’ humor can sometimes be as surreal as the paintings of Salvador Dali, whose paintings served as the inspiration behind the song "Salvador Dali in a State of Grace." Frank will joke about where Dali might be now or about playing a private concert for Picasso. He talks about his own music using descriptive metaphors. "Salvador Dali was one of the proponents of the surreal avant-garde painting movement, taking traditional images and reinvent …
Read more...
I first ran into trumpeter Dave Scott at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). Every Friday night, LACMA provides a year round showcase of some of the finest jazz on the West Coast, and it's free. I was familiar with Scott because he was an instructor for the jazz department at my alma mater, the University of Southern California, and he had a release on Vinny Golia's Nine Winds label, the premiere free jazz label in North America. The following is a candid portrait of the horn player th …
Read more...
When I received Loston Harris's debut in the mail, I actually laughed out loud that the press release described his vocal quality as to that of a cigar. Being a cigar smoker myself, I was curious as to how that comparison would be drawn. I put the CD on and I soon began to understand why. This young man audibly had all the vocal facilities to be a star. I had an opportunity to sit down with the young Harris during his recent North American tour for his inaugural release on N2K, 'Comes Love'.
Read more...
"My philosophy," said Michel Petrucciani, "is to have a really good time and never to let anything stop me from doing what I want to do." Nothing unusual about that, one might think. But since Petrucciani was an adult standing only three feet high and weighing 65 pounds, one might expect his ambitions to have been, so to speak, closer to the ground. But, had he not aspired to achievements above his station, he might have chosen to play something more convenient such as the harmonica rather than …
Read more...