Pablo Aslan Quintet: Piazzolla in Brooklyn
Pablo Aslan Quintet
Piazzolla In Brooklyn
Soundbrush Records
2011
Thanks to artists like pianist Pablo Ziegler, woodwind multi-instrumentalist Paquito D'Rivera and bassist Pablo Aslan, the union of jazz and tango has been made complete over the last several decades. Tango music, which like jazz has had a long and complex history often entwined with issues of class, has been present in the Americas for well over 100 years. As popular music, tango was in many ways the ...
Read MoreLonnie Smith and Johnny Hammond: Organ Explorers Of The Kudu Kind
When the 40th Anniversary celebration of Creed Taylor's CTI Records began, the focus fell on the label's flagship artists and classic albums, but the final wave of releases shines a light on some neglected works that are only now seeing their first U.S. release on CD. The four CDs that bring this celebration to an end--which include organists Lonnie Smith's Mama Wailer and Johnny Hammond's Wild Horses Rock Steady, the subjects of this review--also differ from the other albums that ...
Read MoreWynton Marsalis' Swinging Into The 21st Redux
Sony Legacy has re-issued trumpeter Wynton Marsalis' monumental recorded conclusion to the 20th century, Swinging Into The 21st. Originally comprised of nine albums released between June 1999 and August 2000, Swinging Into The 21st was Marsalis' effort to cap two decades of recording with CBS/Sony. The music was impressive in its variety and creative density.
For this reissue, Marsalis' jazz cantata All Rise (Sony, 2002) is included. Composed and premiered during the period of Swinging Into The 21st, it represents ...
Read MoreCTI Celebrates Kudu Legacy: Lonnie Smith, Johnny Hammond, Hank Crawford, Esther Phillips
CTI Masterworks' 40th anniversary reissue program has, until now, focused on producer Creed Taylor's primary label. Two multi-disc sets and 24 single discs have made available on CD cherished CTI LPs by artists such as trumpeters Chet Baker and Freddie Hubbard, saxophonists Paul Desmond and Stanley Turrentine, guitarists George Benson and Kenny Burrell, vibraphonist Milt Jackson and pianist Randy Weston (the little known 1972 masterpiece Blue Moses). Classy affairs all, on which, typically, Taylor blended strong material, top drawer (if, ...
Read MoreJohnny Hodges: Second Set
Johnny Hodges
Second Set
Avid Records
2011
Alto saxophonist Johnny Hodges left Duke Ellington's band in 1951 feeling underappreciated and underpaid and convinced that he would have better luck on his own. Unfortunately he was never able to turn his considerable artistry into a lucrative career, and was back with Ellington in a few years for good. Working with Ellington was definitely where he belonged; his fluttering, gusty sound was one of the benchmarks of the band. ...
Read MoreStefano Bollani, retrato múltiple de un grande ubicuo
“Bollani è un grande, ma... ha il dono dell'ubiquità? E' dappertutto!"
Así, en un comentario escrito en Facebook, expresaba su perplejidad una persona ante la constante presencia de Stefano Bollani (Milán, 1972) en los medios de comunicación italianos, tanto por su actividad en concierto (el pianista es, según muchos promotores italianos, seguro de venta de entradas, incluso por encima de los grandes nombres del jazz venidos de Estados Unidos) como por su reciente paso por televisión. Fueron seis programas en ...
Read MoreMatthias Winckelmann: Happy Birthday ENJA!
ECM, ACT, Winter & Winter, FMP, MPS, ENJA... Germany sounds like a generous land for creative jazz record labels.
ENJA Records, the Münich-based jazz label, was founded in 1971 by Matthias Winckelmann and Horst Weber. For the last forty years ENJA has built an impressive catalog, with more than seven hundred releases that cover a wide range of the jazz history.
At the early stage Winckelmann and Weber focused on the avant-garde jazz, mainly from Europe and Japan. By the ...
Read MoreMats Eilertsen: SkyDive
Mats Eilertsen
SkyDive
Hubro Music
2011
It's significant that, in the personnel listing to SkyDive, Mats Eilertsen lists himself last, despite having composed all its nine tracks, put the group together and produced the recording. It's a simple truth about a humble Norwegian bassist who has, in the past decade or so, been gaining considerable traction, as a co-founding member of the cooperative group The Source, responsible for a number of recordings including the eponymous 2006 recording ...
Read MoreRifftide: The Life and Opinions of Papa Jo Jones
This article appears in Chapter 2 and Chapter 3 of Rifftide: The Life and Opinions of Papa Jo Jones By Papa Jo Jones As Told to Albert Murray (University of Minnesota Press, 2011).
A Different Kind of Living in That Southwest Here is what happened. Basie did exactly what Fats Waller did: all the guys that come under James P. Johnson, you know what I mean, and Willie “The Lion" Smith, they stayed playing that Harlem way, they didn't do ...
Read MoreDave Douglas: Moving the Music Forward
[This article was originally published at All About Jazz in April 2000.]
There aren't many artists who release records two at a time, but trumpeter Dave Douglas has done it already this year with Leap of Faith, a quartet date for Arabesque, and Soul On Soul, a sextet session for RCA Victor which pays tribute to the late pianist and composer Mary Lou Williams. On top of that, Douglas has scored one of the most sought-after prizes in jazz: a ...
Read MoreBrian Adler: A World of Percussion
Brian Adler is truly both a drummer and a percussionist--in his world, the drum set coexists peacefully with a dizzying array of ethnic percussion instruments as equal partners in a myriad of musical possibilities. His work with vocalist Sunny Kim in the Prana Trio--which also includes a rotating cast of guest artists such as Frank Carlberg, Stomu Takeshi, Carmen Staaf, and Jeremy Udden--is a case in point. His nimble, sensitive approach to the drum set is matched only by his ...
Read MoreManfred Eicher: Through the Lens
It begins in silence, always silence. Since the 1990s, all ECM recordings begin with five seconds of silence, and so, too, do directors Norbert Wiedmer and Peter Guyer open their feature film on the heralded German record label and its enigmatic founder, Sounds and Silence: Travels with Manfred Eicher. As longtime ECM recording artist Keith Jarrett's performance of G.I. Gurdjieff's “Reading of Sacred Books," from the pianist's Sacred Hymns (1980), begins in the background, the film fades in on Eicher, ...
Read MoreEnjoy Jazz: Mannheim, Germany, October 2-November 18, 2011, Week 3
Week 1-2 | Week 3-4 | Week 5-6 | Week 7
Enjoy Jazz Festival
Heidelberg/Mannheim/Ludwigshafen, Germany
October 2--November 18, 2011, Week 3
Bugge Wesseltoft & Henrik Schwarz
The black and white stage design gave more than a hint of the dynamic performance pianist Bugge Wesseltoft and DJ Henrik Schwarz were about to bring to the day. Featuring the new album Wesseltoft Schwarz Duo (Jazzland, 2011), the show started with “Kammermusik" in rather contemplative tones, which then ...
Read MoreTad Hershorn: Norman Granz - The Man Who Used Jazz for Justice
Norman Granz: The Man Who Used Jazz for Justice
Tad Hershorn
Hardcover, 488 pages
University of California Press
ISBN: 9780520267824
2011
Impresario Norman Granz changed the course of jazz in so many ways, as creator of the Jazz At The Philharmonic (JATP) tour package and as founder of Verve and other labels. His most indelible contribution may be, as biographer Tad Hershorn recounts, that he used jazz as a vehicle to advance civil rights causes. ...
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