Recent Jazz Articles

"Perhaps the key to understanding his achievement is to realize that, despite the virtues of his instrumental skills, he viewed himself, perhaps more than any of his contemporaries, as a musician first and a drummer only second."

--Ted Gioia

“When I'm playing, I think along melodic lines. For instance, I can go up as the ...

The common element between Sara Serpa's Aurora and Christine Correa's Down Here Below is obviously pianist Ran Blake. Enigmatic to a fault, Blake has made a potent name for himself among improvised music enthusiasts. Blake is an intellectual amalgam of pianists Thelonious Monk and Martial Solal distilled to a dissonant essence.

A long time professor at ...

Reed multi-instrumentalist Alisha Pattillo has a ubiquitous presence in Houston Texas, appearing with her own groups, which take on a variety of formats: Alisha's Quartet, Alisha's Quartet + 1 and Alisha's Quartet - 1. She is also the reed player for the Ezra Charles Band and Steve Krase & The in Crowd.

Pattillo has recently released ...

"Would you support an art strike?" That's the question I've been asking musicians for the past few months. “Will you agree to stop writing and performing music for one year?" In 1990 the London artists Stewart Home and Mark Pawson proposed that all artists cease to “make, exhibit, distribute, sell, or discuss their work" for three ...

Everybody loves the romance of a comeback: the phoenix-like rise from adversity, long-term exile, obscurity or defeat. Think of US President Abraham Lincoln's travails, boxer George Foreman's regaining the World Heavyweight title at the age of 45, actor Sean Connery's return as Bond, David Bowie's eternal reinvention or, indeed, the peculiar cycles of fashion that have ...

Boris (le) Poisson Rouge May 6, 2013

It's hard to corral Boris into a metal-generic corner. Whilst this Tokyo trio's prime reputation revolves around a spiraling psychedelic ascension, it is just as likely to get grubby and direct, or even poppy and spangled. This Poisson show was the first of two nights, dedicated ...

Norwegian trumpeter Arve Henriksen is one of a handful of creative upstarts, like trumpeters Nils Petter Molvær or Erik Truffaz, who are embracing electronics and the improvisational side of jazz in their music. Henriksen's music is an otherworldly amalgamation of different and sometimes opposing elements, with imaginative soundscapes built on the tradition that trumpeter Miles Davis ...

In a time of financial crisis in the world in general and in the music business in particular, the natural thing to do would be to cut down the number of releases and concentrate on safe and palatable productions that cater to a major audience with a predefined taste. However, Oliver Weindling's Babel Label has always ...

Meet Mike Davis: Mike Davis has lived several distinct musical lives. He has been a student, a serious student of performance and of theory and of composition and of art. He has been a gig warrior, playing multiple shows in multiple styles on different instruments at different venues with different bands on the same day ...

Gina Southgate and The People Band The Vortex London, UK May 11, 2013 On a Saturday evening in the heart of Dalston, East London, The People Band once again graced The Vortex with its free form and improvised style of jazz. As the group played, artist Gina Southgate, with the help of a ...

Scotch whiskey is an acquired taste; you must first be introduced and develop a relationship with it before this strong water reveals her charms. The same can be said for the singing of Rickie Lee Jones. A hipster in the late-1970s, Jones grew into a blind sage prophetess, showing how others' music could be experienced differently. ...

Bray Jazz Festival Bray, County Wicklow Ireland May 3-5, 2013 For many years, the picturesque town of Bray's main claim to fame has been that it's the oldest inhabited seaside town in Ireland. That is, it was the main claim to fame until Bray local lass Katie Taylor won boxing gold at the ...

Doc Severinsen and the San Miguel 5 Musical Instrument Museum Phoenix, AZ May 1, 2013 Octogenarian bandleader Doc Severinsen has somehow added new fire to his legendary power and vibrancy in a sizzling coalition that melds Latin gusto with jazz zest. The trumpeter, who will be 86 on July 7, 2013, delivered pyrotechnical ...

Some artists maintain a busy release schedule, putting out an album a year--sometimes, in the case of musicians like guitarist Bill Frisell, even more frequently--while others, for a variety of reasons, are less prolific. Pianist Edward Simon has, in recent years, been issuing albums with broader distribution under his own name--which automatically discounts 2010's independently released ...