Jazz

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Steve Harris  |  Jul 25, 2019
This month we review: Patchwork Jazz Orchestra, Joe Lovano, Duncan Eagles and Joey Defrancesco
Steve Harris  |  Jun 20, 2019
This month we review: Karin Krog & Georgie Fame, Jeff Ballard, Randy Brecker & NDR Bigband and Christian Mcbride
Steve Harris  |  May 14, 2019
This month we review: Rymden, Eric Dolphy, Emile Parisien Quartet, and Andrew Cyrille, Wadada Leo Smith, Bill Frisell
Steve Harris  |  Apr 03, 2019
This month we review: Gary Burton, James Francies, Bob James Trio, & Chucho ValdÉs
Steve Harris  |  Mar 06, 2019
This month we review: Christian Sands, Lionel Loueke, Shai Maestro, & Massimiliano Coclite 4tet
Steve Harris  |  Dec 01, 2018
This month we review: Wayne Shorter, Camilla George, All About That Basie, and Omar Sosa & Yilian Cañizares
Steve Harris  |  Nov 01, 2018
This month we review: Soft Machine, Bansangu Orchestra, Tony Kofi and The Organisation, and New York All-Stars.
Steve Harris  |  Oct 01, 2018
This month we review: John Coltrane, Tony Kofi and The Organisation, Bansangu Orchestra, and Mark Kavuma.
Steve Harris  |  Sep 01, 2018
This month we review: Stefano Bollani, Timo Lassy, Renee Rosnes, and Andreas Varady
Steve Harris  |  Sep 06, 2014
Last Dance - ECM 378 0524 In 2007, when they hadn’t worked together for 30 years, pianist and bassist met during the making of a film about Haden, and Jarrett invited Haden to his home studio. They spent four days recording, and some of the results were heard on the 2010 album Jasmine. In this new collection, tunes include the jazz standards ‘Dance Of The Infidels’ by Bud Powell and Monk’s ‘’Round Midnight’ as well as ballads like ‘My Old Flame’. With a second album celebrating the same reunion, you’ll think that you’re in for more of the same, and it’s true.
Steve Harris  |  Dec 10, 2010
After all these decades, the classic quintet lineup endures. Graduating from the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama as a classical pianist in 2002, Stapleton based his own group on two luminaries of the same college, bassist Paula Gardiner and drummer Elliott Bennett, adding trumpeter Jonny Bruce, a 2006 graduate. Saxophonist is Ben Waghorn, who’s been heard with Kasabian and Goldfrapp as well as in his own quartet. Stapleton often seems to be taking a back seat, but what holds this complex, disciplined music together is his ability as a composer, creating extended pieces that can move from bombast to lyricism with real structure and purpose.
Steve Harris  |  Dec 10, 2010
Pianist and bassist hadn’t worked together since the end of Jarrett’s American Quartet in 1976, but after meeting in 2007 during the making of a film about Haden, they spent four days recording in Jarrett’s home studio. ‘It has a very dry sound and we didn’t want to have the recording sound like anything but what we were hearing while we played. So it is direct and straightforward,’ writes Jarrett. A far cry from the glossy, groomed perfection of so many ECM issues, it is intimate, immediate and communicative.
Steve Harris  |  Dec 10, 2010
Composer, pianist, leader and educator Django Bates has done just about everything, but in his 50th year he’s filled a gap by offering this tribute to his earliest inspiration, Charlie Parker. The idea, though, dates back to 2005, the 50th anniversary of Parker’s death, when Bates arranged tunes associated with Bird for a celebration event in Copenhagen. On this trio album he doesn’t play a bop style but lets loose his own piano pyrotechnics in ‘Scrapple From The Apple’ and other be-bop anthems. A final piece of contemplative musing creates its own space from a fragment of ‘Ah-Leu-Cha’, and if this is the least frenetic track, it’s also one of the most successful.
Steve Harris  |  Dec 10, 2010
After a brilliant start as a boy classical pianist, the teenage Cowley played in a Blues Brothers tribute band, then plunged into electronic pop with the Brand New Heavies and Zero 7 and his own group Fragile State. Returning to the piano, he formed the trio which recorded Displaced in 2006 and Loud Louder Stop in 2008. For their third album the trio are still together, or to be more accurate, more together than ever. They play as one.
Steve Harris  |  Dec 10, 2010
No matter how deeply it’s been mined before, the Blue Note vault is still a rich source of reissue gold. In what amounts to a relaunch of the XRCD audiophile format, Audio Wave has begun with a clutch of soul jazz classics. Soul Station has Mobley’s old Jazz Messengers boss Art Blakey on drums, with Paul Chambers on bass and bluesy pianist Wynton Kelly. This seemingly carefree album marked a turning-point for the light-toned tenor player, as 1961 would see him briefly and not very happily joining Miles Davis.

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