wordpress_typepad_com (Free subscription) | yesterday
One normally thinks of the drummer-bandleader chair in this music as easily given to a mentality that embraces “more is more.” Whether bombastic or just plain full, drummers’ bands often focus on mass, rhythm and time. In the post-free arena, leaders like Gerry Hemingway, John Hollenbeck and Harris Eisenstadt have learned not only that every [...]
bebop spoken here (Free subscription) | 02/02/2010
Big Band Open Rehearsal The Customs House Big Band's first open rehearsal of 2010 takes place on Tuesday evening (Feb 2) at the New Crown Hotel, South Shields. The format is as per previous years; first set trying out and perfecting new numbers, second set concert with vocals from the ever delightful Ruth Lambert . It's free and the down beat is at 8:00 pm. Unfortunately, from my point of view, it...
breath of life (Free subscription) | 02/01/2010
Drums of Passion, The African Beat and Djabote are three major indexes in the history of recorded African beats.
JazzHQ (Free subscription) | 01/28/2010
Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers - Art Blakey!! Jazz Messengers!! (Analogue Productions ) Barry Finnerty - Blues For Trane (Pony ) Brian Smith - Rendezvous (Fone ) Carbon / Elliott Sharp - Void Coordinates (Phantom ) Charles Mingus - Black Saint And The Sinner Lady (Analogue Productions ) Chick Corea - Return To Forever (Pid ) Coleman Hawkins - Wrapped Tight (Analogue Prod. ) Coleman Hawkins -...
Pandora (Free subscription) | 01/27/2010
The "Musicology Show" is back, with a new show about jazz drumming. Pandora music analyst Jeff Anthony pulls back the curtain on our jazz genome to show us the signature styles of Elvin Jones, Tony Williams and "Philly Joe" Jones -- arguably three of the greatest drummers who ever picked up sticks. This show was edited and recorded by Tyler Brown at Bellboy Recording , a studio...
a blind flaneur (Free subscription) | 01/22/2010
When I listened again to John Coltrane’s Alabama, I was moved by its prayerful tone. I heard the seeds of A Love Supreme in Coltrane’s soaring solo as well as Elvin Jones’ crashing cymbals. I hear the same life force in this live version of Naima, which the quartet performed on July 27, 1965 at the Antibes Jazz Festival. Miraculously, a fragment of A Love Supreme survives from the...
Rifftides (Free subscription) | 01/15/2010
James Moody is in Detroit this week. Mark Stryker, the music critic of The Detroit Free Press, heralded the event with a column that begins: James Moody is my hero, and he should be yours. At 84, the irrepressible saxophonist...
local Cut (Free subscription) | 01/06/2010
Portland bassist David Friesen rarely plays the same song twice. Back in the mid-1960s, a young jazz bassist named David Friesen found his band playing opposite the classic John Coltrane Quartet at a Seattle club called the Penthouse. Although he sat just a few feet away from some of the most powerful and distinctive players in [...] Related posts: U.S.E.’s Top 5 Favorite Dance Songs Electric...
Suburban Guerrilla (Free subscription) | 12/30/2009
The Billy Strayhorn classic with Johnny Hartman on vocal, John Coltrane, tenor sax. McCoy Tyner, piano; Jimmy Garrison, bass; Elvin Jones, drums.
breath of life (Free subscription) | 12/28/2009
You will feel much, much better about the world and about your life if you listen to music of this caliber everyday.
Jazz & Blues Music Reviews (Free subscription) | 12/25/2009
Incredible footage of Coltrane performing in 1960 with Wynton Kelly, Paul Chambers and Jimmy Cobb beginning his epic quest, with his Atlantic and Prestige recordings behind him and his Impulse ones to come. They follow what was by then the standard Miles Davis repertoire such as "Walkin'" and "Autumn Leaves." There is a special treat at the end of this session with Oscar Peterson...
All About Jazz (Free subscription) | 12/07/2009
Grant Green Matador Blue Note / Music Matters 2009 (1964) This may be the reissue of 2009: a resplendent vinyl pressing of guitarist Grant Green's Matador on two 180-gram, 45-rpm records from Music Matters. This May 1964 recording was, like many Blue Note sets, not released until many years later (November 1979 in Japan in this case) and only reached the U.S. on CD in 1990. It has not been remastered...
Mick Hartley (Free subscription) | 11/29/2009
Unusually for me, some jazz...guitarist Sonny Sharrock, with Pharoah Sanders on tenor sax, Elvin Jones on drums, and Charnett Moffett on bass, from the 1991 album Ask the Ages. Modern jazz guitar somehow rarely has the body to stand up...
Rifftides (Free subscription) | 11/28/2009
Hal Weary, A Rendezvous with Déjà Vu (halwearyjazz). Weary is a pianist from the west on the rise in New York City. The quintet numbers on his debut CD draw on the hard-bop/gospel spirit of Horace Silver and Art...
All About Jazz (Free subscription) | 11/23/2009
From one angle, the career of the saxophonist Steve Grossman might seem to have unfolded in reverse. He came onto the radar in 1969, playing state-of-the-art jazz-rock with Miles Davis; he was all of 18. From that sideman perch, among the most visible in jazz, he went on to play rugged, horizon-scanning postbop in the style of John Coltrane, notably with Coltranes former drummer Elvin Jones. Then came...
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