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Mark Miller: Way Down That Lonesome Road - Lonnie Johnson in Toronto 1965-1970
Way Down That Lonesome Road: Lonnie Johnson in Toronto 1965-1970 Mark Miller Paper; 160 pages ISBN 978-1-55128-148-3 The Mercury Press 2011
The life of singer and guitarist m: Lonnie Johnson has been chronicled well enough for a blues performer. But leave it to Mark Miller to find an adjunct that adds a whole new dimension to Johnson's biography--the last five years of his life, which he lived in Toronto... Clare Fischer, Arranger and Keyboardist, Is Dead at 83
 Mr. Fischer was influential in jazz and arranged pop and R&B compositions for the likes of Paul McCartney, Michael Jackson, Prince and Celine Dion. Terell Stafford: Trial and Inspiration
Terell Stafford is as likely to credit his influences as he is to impress his listeners. Coming to jazz comparatively later than many players, and even with his busy schedule as a sideman, leader and educator, he remains devoted to exploring the music's roots, while expressing a relentless desire to learn more... Tim Berne: Snakeoil
Tim Berne Snakeoil ECM Records 2012
When artists who've already built lengthy careers elsewhere over a period of years (sometimes decades) come to record for Germany's ECM Records, there is occasional trepidation amongst some of their longstanding fans. This is, after all, not just about facilitating the release of recordings; this is a label with a vision, a very personal aesthetic. With over 1,100 titles released across more than four decades, and an expansive stylistic purview that invariably reflects m: Manfred Eicher's unmistakable imprint, there's an unsupportable myth that the label forces its own aesthetic onto the artists with whom the label head/primary producer chooses to work. With Snakeoil, his first ECM recording as a leader, alto saxophonist Tim Berne does, indeed, go places his nearly forty previous recordings don't, but there are more than enough of his longstanding markers to support what is closer to the real truth about working with ECM. Eicher is, indeed, an active producer--a de facto added member to any group he produces--but it's still all about collaboration, about finding that nexus where he and his artists can meet... Take Five With Mike Lorenz
Meet Mike Lorenz: Mike Lorenz, guitarist/composer/bandleader, is an up-and- coming musician from Philadelphia, PA. He leads an original jazz quartet, the Mike Lorenz Quartet, which features some of the most in-demand musicians in the Philadelphia area as well as its surrounding areas.
Instrument(s): Guitar... Ahmad Jamal: Blue Moon
Ahmad Jamal Blue Moon Jazz Village 2012
It is tempting to say that, at age 82, Ahmad Jamal carries on getting better and better, but that would be to miss the point. The pianist long ago reached a level of perfection from which it is simply not possible to get better. It is a level, however, to which he habitually returns. In 2010, Jamal released one of the most sublime albums in his long and splendid career, the quartet set A Quiet Time (Dreyfus Records). Two years later, he has released another one every bit as great... Pop Music Choices for New Year’s Eve
 From Chuck Berry to Michael Feinstein, Wynton Marsalis to Patti Smith, New Year’s Eve in New York City has musical accompaniment for every ear. Pop Music in 2012
 Two of the coming year’s more promising events take place next weekend: Winter Jazzfest and Globalfest. Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra at Symphony Space - Review
In a 10th anniversary celebration at Symphony Space over the weekend the Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra showed the full range of its ambitions. Senegala€(TM)s Orchestra Baobab and Guineaa€(TM)s Authenticite Movement Show Their Roots
Sterns Music's lovingly put-together compilations of work by stars of Francophone West African music's "belle A(C)poque"--the decade and a half accompanying and immediately following the independence years of the 1960s--are now digging further into history with releases featuring more obscure, but just as entrancing, figures from that era... Take Five With Dave Bryant
Meet Dave Bryant: Keyboardist and composer, Dave Bryant is best known for his work as a member of m: Ornette Coleman's Prime Time group. Bryant's addition to the group marked Coleman's first extended work with a keyboard instrument in decades.
Instrument(s): Keyboards.
Teachers and/or influences? I went through a lot of teachers, but my favorites were Fred and Shirley Clements when I was growing up in my home town, and Bruce Thomas and John Arcaro at Berklee. I also have fond memories of Berklee classes with m: George Garzone, Ed Tomassi, Herman Johnson, and Paul Schmelling. Best jazz pedagogy I ever witnessed? An afternoon spent (as a guest) in the studio of drummer Lenny Nelson}, an inspiration that's lasted a lifetime... Sam Rivers, Jazz Musician, Dies at 88
 Mr. Rivers, with a taut and throaty sound on his tenor saxophone, was among the pioneers in the postwar jazz avant-garde. Ahmad Jamal
In February 2010, at the well seasoned age of 80, pianist m: Ahmad Jamal released A Quiet Time on Dreyfus Records. It is an album many observers regard as up there in the stratosphere along with such landmark Jamal discs as Chicago Revisited (Telarc, 1992) or A L'Olympia (Dreyfus, 1996), to name just two of many--or even Jamal's breakthrough LP, But Not For Me: At The Pershing (Chess, 1958)... Julius Hemphill / Peter Kowald: Live at Kassiopeia
Julius Hemphill / Peter Kowald Live at Kassiopeia No Business Records 2011
Out of the blue comes this double disc set featuring two distinguished alumni, both sadly now departed, of two parallel streams of musical pioneering. German bassist m: Peter Kowald was one of the authors of European free improvisation. Though initially in the shadows of his more assertive compatriots, saxophonist m: Peter Brotzmann and pianist m: Alexander von Schlippenbach, he came into his own through giving full rein to his open spirit and almost obsessive desire to communicate, culminating in his Global Village concept and appearances with virtually every free jazz luminary... Josh Arcoleo: Beginnings
Josh Arcoleo Beginnings Edition Records 2012
Over the decades since m: Coleman Hawkins and m: Lester Young were making their reputations, forging in their wake two very different paradigms for the tenor saxophone, the instrument's players have acquired something of the aura of the gunslingers of the American Frontier. Other instruments lend themselves to compare-and-contrast, too, but there is something uniquely high noon about the tenor and its place in jazz legend... NewUrbanJazz Allows Artists to Stretch Out, Close to Home
 NewUrbanJazz, now in its third season, is gaining traction with audiences, and the word is out among local artists of national stature that the concert series is a useful forum for delving into formats they don’t often explore. MUSIC REVIEW; New York Band, Worldly Desires
Jon Pareles reviews 10th anniversary concert of the Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra at Symphony Space. Photos Preservation Hall Jazz Band at Carnegie Hall - Review
The Preservation Hall Jazz Band celebrated the New Orleans hall’s 50th anniversary at Carnegie Hall on Saturday night. Kathy Sloane: Keystone Korner - Portrait Of A Jazz Club
Keystone Korner: Portrait Of A Jazz Club Kathy Sloane 220 pages; audio CD ISBN: 978-0-253-35691-8 Indiana University Press 2012
Photographer Kathy Sloane's Keystone Korner: Portrait Of A Jazz Club is a love letter: a love letter to something more than just a business, to something less than a generation. It's a love letter to a relatively short-lived community that coalesced around a jazz club in San Francisco's North Beach neighborhood: the people who worked there, the characters who frequented it, the musicians who played there. If Sloane's act of authorship is a love letter, the story that emerges is a bittersweet tragedy, driven by the well-rehearsed tension between art and commerce and set against the backdrop of San Francisco in the 1970s, a time and place that proved insufficiently mobilized by the inspired musical programming of the Keystone Korner to adequately sustain it... Pop and Jazz Concert Highs of 2011
 The New York Times’s jazz and pop critics pick their favorite stage performances this year, including shows from Beyoncé, Paul Motian and Paul Simon. Chucho Valdés Plays With the Afro-Cuban Messengers
 Chucho Valdés, a custodian of Cuban music, is on tour in the United States with his band, Afro-Cuban Messengers, and the flicker of evangelism in that name is surely no mistake. John Levy, Bassist and Talent Manager, Dies at 99
 Mr. Levy, widely credited as the first African-American personal manager in jazz, represented big names like Nancy Wilson, Cannonball Adderley and Herbie Hancock. John Geggie / Ron Miles / David Occhipinti: Ottawa, Canada, January 14, 2012
John Geggie / Ron Miles / David Occhipinti Geggie Concert Series NAC Fourth Stage, Ottawa, Canada January 14, 2012
For his first concert of 2012, bassist John Geggie reaffirmed the astute ability to bring together musicians in unheard-of configurations that's made his longstanding Geggie Concert Series an Ottawa institution. Despite living in a city that would have a hard time getting classified as a jazz mecca, Geggie's leadership of the Ottawa International Jazz Festival's late night jam sessions, touring with groups such as Chelsea Bridge and artists such as pianist m: D.D. Jackson, and his current role as an educator at Suny Potsdam in upstate New York--not to mention possessing the networking skills to take advantage of every opportunity that comes his way--have helped the bassist put the city on the jazz map through his world-class collaborations. Past work with pianists m: Marilyn Crispell, m: Frank Kimbrough and m: Edward Simon, trumpeter m: Cuong Vu and guitarists m: Vic Juris and m: Ben Monder have all been successful examples of how music without a safety net most certainly works better on some occasions than it does on others, but that the journey is often as good (or better) than the destination... Winter Jazzfest With Herculaneum and ERIMAJ - Review
 Winter Jazzfest, about 60 performances over Friday and Saturday, did what it has been doing since 2005: pushing new groups and their music into visibility. MUSIC REVIEW; Jazz's Annual Reunion Celebration, With Honors for Five Masters
Ben Ratliff reviews the annual concert and celebration for the National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Masters Fellowships at Rose Hall in Jazz at Lincoln Center. Photos Nicole Mitchell Moves, but Still Performs in Chicago
 Nicole Mitchell has won acclaim for her flute music. But she couldn’t make a living in Chicago, so she moved to California. Zoe Rahman: Kindred Spirits
Zoe Rahman Kindred Spirits Manushi Records 2012
Holy soul food, Batman! It feels good to listen to a musician who plays from the heart rather than the brain. Not that British pianist Zoe Rahman is deficient in the grey stuff or technique. She studied music at Oxford University, the Royal Academy of Music and Berklee; once, twice, three times an alumnus. But when Rahman is seated at the keyboard, and her band kicks in, it is her exuberant spirit that she channels, not her learning. That, anyway, is how it sounds... Take Five With Joseph Patrick Moore
Meet Joseph Patrick Moore: For more than a decade Joseph Patrick Moore has been touring, recording, and establishing himself as an artist with a unique voice and a diversity of talents. His skills as bassist; composer; arranger; producer; author; educator and founding partner of Blue Canoe Digital illustrate why he is a highly sought after musician. Moore's music and creative vision echo the spirits of m: Quincy Jones and m: Herbie Hancock, to name a few... Tim Horner Octet: Teaneck, New Jersey, January 7, 2012
Tim Horner Octet Puffin Cultural Forum Teaneck, NJ January 7, 2012
Tim Horner's one night gig at the Puffin Cultural Forum was accompanied by an unusually high set of expectations. In September of last year, Miles High Records released The Places We Feel Free, Horner's impressive maiden voyage as a leader in a career spanning three decades and over two hundred records as a sideman. Places adroitly maneuvers through the sprawling jazz mainstream without evincing any particular stylistic agenda. The drummer/percussionist's prodigious--and heretofore virtually unknown--talents as a composer and arranger, plus the efforts of a mid-sized band of Horner's middle aged peers, were essential in making a distinctive recording. The age of Horner and his cohorts is worth noting, in part because it's difficult to imagine a group of young musicians, regardless of their talent and level of training, interpreting his music with such skill, empathy, passion, and individuality. Horner has played with these guys for years--and in some instances, decades--in various configurations. Their camaraderie and mutual respect is evident on every one of the disc's ten tracks... Peloton: Helsinki, Finland, January 8, 2012
Peloton The Cable Factory Helsinki, Finland November 2011--January 2012 January 8, 2012
Many a gigging musician has spent lengthy formative hours in an opera house pit, a symphony orchestra stand or, in this case, under the modern equivalent of a big top. With contemporary circus entertainment more compact--even low key at times--venues are typically former industrial project buildings rather than a portable canvas canopy, but other than the acoustics it's the same for the musician: regular work, but with the spice of live performance... Take Five With John Raymond
Meet John Raymond: "A dynamic and soulful musician, both as a trumpet player and a composer. John Raymond uses his knowledge of the jazz tradition to forge a style that honors the masters of our music as well as being creative, unpredictable and compelling. John has a unique voice, and he is definitely saying something that is worth listening to." -- m: Jon Faddis, world-renowned trumpeter/educator... By: Maryland Real Estate | Baltimore Real Estate | Annapolis Real Estate
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