Jazz

All About Jazz is celebrating Wallace Roney's birthday today! At a time when much of the Jazz world seems content to simply attempt to recreate the past, trumpeter/composer Wallace Roney follows the true Jazz tradition of utilizing the past to move forward. This has resulted in acknowledgment by the public and his peers with his receipt of three Grammy Awards and numerous nominations for projects in which he was the featured performer and/or collaborator... Read more...

By Stef For those who don't know Zen Widow, the trio is worth mentioning for its previous recordings too. The trio consists of Gianni Gebbia on sax, Matthew Goodheart on piano and Garth Powell on drums. Their debut album brought seventeen pieces of short ideas and more elaborate developments, all pretty abstract sketches and adventurous sound creations, a little crazy at times, yet quite coherent overall. Their second album, "Quodlibet", was even better, more accessible, more melodious, "drawing on a wealth of material that ranges from Soviet era cabaret tunes to Gene Pitney classics to 17th Century Italian opera arias", and using these as inspiration to work from, not as separate tunes, but within the same piece. The result is interesting and beautiful at the same time. On their third album, with the frightening title "Screaming In Daytime", the same concept is used, but then with material coming from tenor saxophonist Glenn Spearman. As the liner notes say "Wishing to maintain the essence of Glenn's rich compositional style was the priority, without resorting to a typical tribute collection of an artist's past works". ... yet now the trio is expanded with no one less than Wadada Leo Smith on trumpet. Goodheart already played with Smith before, including on the highly recommendable duo album "Interludes Of Breath And Substance" (1998). This album starts with a powerful and typical horn phrase by Smith, an incantation and wake-up call at the same time, full of contemplative calm and spiritual yearning. Then Powel joins on light percussion with strong pulse, a great introduction for the rest of the music to come. Halfway the track Gebbia joins for a few echoing phrases, as an invitation for the piano to join - replacing trumpet and drums and sax - and the mood shifts into one of only calm contemplation on keyboards, and when the sounds then completely dissolve into silence, the sax, solo again, picks up the tread, and Powell picks up a single-percussion rhythmic delight, with some small leftovers of trumpet and sound resurging before it all fades out. It is all strange, pleasant, welcoming, open-ended, light-textured, with the artists taking turns in making the music, rather than simultaneously, in a slow, evolving unhurried relay of creative thoughts and shared sentiments. Musically, the album ranges from real "soundscape" mode in "This Seeming Dream" to the more jazzy long closing track, "Musa Physics", which is built around an actual theme and has more density and simultaneous interplay. A strange and beautiful album. Subscribe

In terms of CD releases, pianist Satoko Fujii passed the bandleader baton to her husband, trumpeter m: Natsuki Tamura, in 2012, resulting in two exceptional albums on the Libra Records label: the trumpet/piano duo outing, Muku, and Forever, from Tamura's European folk music-flavored Gato Libre group. For the always prolific Fujii, a year without a release under her leadership is an oddity. The year 2013 is lining up differently, however, with the debut of the Satoko Fujii New Trio's Spring Storm and, now, from her Satoko Fujii Ma-Do Quartet, Time Stands Still...

First Annual GuitarNow! Festival, Day Two Kailash Mital Theatre Carleton University Ottawa, Canada May 4, 2013 When local guitarist Roddy Ellias--the recipient, that very week, of one of the Jazz Journalist Association's Jazz Hero awards for 2013 (the only Canadian on the list)--created the concept of the first annual GuitarNow! Festival with Carleton University, it's objective was to provide Ottawa guitarists with three days of intensive workshops, the chance to hear a wide variety of world-class guitarists from as close by as their own city and as far away as the UK and United States, and the opportunity to perhaps even play with them at nightly jam sessions. The three-day festival, in its inaugural year, was a tremendous success, though there were a few minor issues that should be adjusted when Ellias and his team put together next year's edition--and, it seems, based on the success of the first year, that there will be a second one...

Meet Jon LaTona: Born and raised in Buffalo, NY. I loved jazz so much that I wanted to go to school for it. Now I have a debut record that I am extremely proud of. It was so thrilling to record because I was working with musicians that I grew up watching and listening to. Instrument(s): Acoustic bass...

Although saxophonist m: Noah Preminger titled his disc Haymaker, a term denoting a wildly unorthodox punch thrown by a boxer, his third release as a leader (second for Palmetto) is anything but undisciplined. Following Before The Rain (Palmetto, 2011), he reorganizes his quartet and reunites with guitarist m: Ben Monder from debut sextet session Dry Bridge Road (Nowt Records, 2008). The pair share an affinity for disciplined music making and the gifts of musical sprezzatura and a pure tone...

The swagger that distinguished the original lineup of The Allman Brothers Band is on full display here in "Don't Keep Me Wondering," but a comparable confidence permeates this entire performance captured roughly two months before the untimely death of founding member guitarist Duane Allman. Recorded August 26th 1971 at New York's A&R Studios (and broadcast live on WPLJ-FM radio), the sextet is clearly sensing the realization their hard work was beginning to come to fruition with the burgeoning success of At Fillmore East (Atlantic, 1971) released the previous month...

In musical remembrance of artists past: Night Lights returns with another program of jazz elegies for Memorial Day weekend.

Grab this weekend's Wall Street Journal. For my first "Playlist" column in the paper's Review section, I interview Joy Behar on her favorite song as a kid growing up in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. It's Frank Sinatra's All the Way—and her story is priceless! She had me in stitches. Go here. Last call! If you're in Toronto on Thursday, May 30, I'll be giving a multimedia talk at the studios of JAZZ.FM 91 at Long & McQuade Performance Hall. I'll be detailing the unlikely events that caused jazz styles to change so often between 1942 and 1972—the subject of my book, Why Jazz Happened. For information and tickets, go here. Best thing I saw last week: The French thriller Touchez Pas au Grisbi (1954). Jean Gabin had quiet presence. Coolest thing I did last week: Tony Bennett asked me to give a jazz talk at Frank Sinatra High School of the Arts in Astoria, Queens. I spoke on why pop and jazz singers flourished between 1954 and 1964—and why it all came to an end. Hats off to educator Tom Sandri and his terrific students—who correctly guessed every single one of the vocalists I played, including the obscure ones. Harry Carney. You may have heard baritone saxophonist Harry Carney on Duke Ellington's records. But unless you were lucky enough to see the band, you probably have no idea what he looks like or how he held his instrument. Well, here he is in a color film funded by a corporate sponsor in the early '60s. Thanks to reader John Cooper and his sharp eye...    Love jazz guitar? Want to learn more? Here's a multipart video series on the instrument's rich history—thanks to reader and WRTC radio host Chris Cowles...   Chic alors! Sidney Bechet. National Jazz Museum of Harlem director Loren Schoenberg found this mega montage video of Sidney Bechet and loads of other jazz greats. I thought Charlie Parker only turned up in only two films—one with Dizzy Gillespie playing Hot House on Dick Hyman's TV show and with another with Coleman Hawkins. And yet, at 1:52 of this clip, there's Bird with bassist Chubby Jackson on WPIX, which began broadcasting in New York in 1948. Is this legit? And if so, what's the story?    Jazz radio. Raoul van Hall of Oregon Public Broadcasting, hosts a superb jazz show on KMDH every Saturday from 6 to 9 p.m. (EST). You can tune in on your computer from anywhere in the world by going here. CD discovery of the week. The problem with many Oscar Pettiford albums is you can barely hear him playing the bass. In many cases he was with a large ensemble or simply keeping time with instruments that overshadowed him. Now, on Oscar Pettiford: Germany 1958-1959 (Jazz Haus), you can hear the robust player in all his thumping glory. During Pettiford's stay there in the late '50s, he was recorded playing bass and cello with German and American musicians—including Lucky Thompson, Attila Zoller, Kenny Clarke, Rolf Kuhn and Dusko Goykovich. But the engineer on these lost-tape recordings was the real hero—wisely miking Pettiford so he stood out. The results tell you a great deal about Pettiford's big modern feel and swinging time. Oddball album cover of the week. Design ideas come from the strangest places—even record libraries! I found the one below (top)—The Guido Manusardi Trio from 1967—on a Swedish jazz site. Oscar Peterson's Night Train was released by Verve five years earlier.

After he left his native New Orleans as a teenager, the great clarinetist and, later, soprano saxophonist Sidney Bechet for decades toured widely in the United States and Europe. He was respected for his originality and powerful playing, but he tired of struggling to make a consistent living in the US and moved to Paris [...]