Today being international jazz day, there will be much celebrating of the greatness of its history. I’ve done that in the past; it is a great history. But it is not all back in historical times; jazz lives, and evolves, and continues to be great. Yet how many lists of the greatest jazz albums include anything from the current century?
That they do not is no indictment of them; only sixteen percent of the years when recorded jazz has existed (not counting the present year yet) are in the twenty-first century, after all, and some prefer to bestow the label of greatness after more perspective has been achieved than sixteen (or fewer, for newer releases) years.
Nonetheless, if people are to respect jazz as a living art form, a look back at the best of its more recent releases seems worthwhile. Here’s one man’s “baker’s dozen...
That they do not is no indictment of them; only sixteen percent of the years when recorded jazz has existed (not counting the present year yet) are in the twenty-first century, after all, and some prefer to bestow the label of greatness after more perspective has been achieved than sixteen (or fewer, for newer releases) years.
Nonetheless, if people are to respect jazz as a living art form, a look back at the best of its more recent releases seems worthwhile. Here’s one man’s “baker’s dozen...
- 4/30/2016
- by SteveHoltje
- www.culturecatch.com
Malcolm Earl "Mal" Waldron was born on August 16, 1925 in New York City. His father worked for the Long Island Rail Road. Mal started taking classical piano lessons at age seven and, inspired by his love of jazz, also learned alto saxophone. He earned a B.A. in Music from Queens College, with the G.I. Bill (he'd been drafted in 1943 and served for two years, fortunately not seeing combat) paying for his tuition. He worked in jazz, blues, and R&B contexts and made his first recording in 1952 as a member of Ike Quebec's band. In '54-56 he was part of Charles Mingus's Jazz Workshop and recorded with Mingus. Waldron went out on his own as a leader at the end of 1956 with the album Mal/1 on Prestige and quickly became one of the prolific label's house pianists. The following year he added to his workload the position of Billie Holiday's accompanist,...
- 8/16/2015
- by SteveHoltje
- www.culturecatch.com
Those who keep up with the more avant-garde end of the jazz spectrum have long known that Matthew Shipp is one of the great pianists, but he's reached a higher level of creativity this decade, most recently displayed in his two releases this year, the new solo album I've Been to Many Places and the trio album The Root of Things.
Quick recap of how he got there: While growing up in Delaware, Shipp studied privately with Dennis Sandole, one of John Coltrane's teachers. Later, at New England Conservatory, Shipp studied with Joe Maneri, another avant-jazz great. Shipp's recording career began in 1988 with a duo album with saxophonist Rob Brown, and within a few years the pianist had joined the David S. Ware Quartet; he recorded with that group from 1990 until it disbanded in 2007, then increased his already prolific output by making over two dozen albums as leader or...
Quick recap of how he got there: While growing up in Delaware, Shipp studied privately with Dennis Sandole, one of John Coltrane's teachers. Later, at New England Conservatory, Shipp studied with Joe Maneri, another avant-jazz great. Shipp's recording career began in 1988 with a duo album with saxophonist Rob Brown, and within a few years the pianist had joined the David S. Ware Quartet; he recorded with that group from 1990 until it disbanded in 2007, then increased his already prolific output by making over two dozen albums as leader or...
- 10/4/2014
- by SteveHoltje
- www.culturecatch.com
Last year I started anointing a Jazz Artist of the Year after a spurt of six Ivo Perelman albums that would have dominated my best-of list if not set apart. I've done it again because once again there was an artist so prolific And so good that he was again worth noting separately. Though pianist Matthew Shipp only released one album as a leader in 2013, he was a prolific collaborator, especially with Perelman. And it has been many years since Shipp was a 'sideman'; he is an equal on these projects.
Taking well-deserved primacy here, of course, is his one new 2013 album under his own name (there was also Greatest Hits, reviewed by Dusty Wright here), though several of those listed below it are of equal quality.
Matthew Shipp: Piano Sutras (Thirsty Ear)
After my review of this great, great solo piano album was published, I worried that people might...
Taking well-deserved primacy here, of course, is his one new 2013 album under his own name (there was also Greatest Hits, reviewed by Dusty Wright here), though several of those listed below it are of equal quality.
Matthew Shipp: Piano Sutras (Thirsty Ear)
After my review of this great, great solo piano album was published, I worried that people might...
- 1/13/2014
- by SteveHoltje
- www.culturecatch.com
Matthew Shipp: Piano Sutras (Thirsty Ear)
Every Matthew Shipp album is a major event. Not in the sense of a Lady Gaga album, accompanied by a relentless publicity campaign and hyped as a cultural upheaval of massive commercial significance. No, a Matthew Shipp album is a major event for jazz because he is one of the most important pianists alive, and also because he hardly ever rests on his laurels, comfortable in a circumscribed style -- he evolves from one album to the next in a nearly disconcerting way. Even though his playing is immediately recognizable -- one would never confuse him with any of the other pianists on the scene -- it shifts slightly from album to album.
This is not merely a matter of setting (solo, trio, duo) or collaborators, though of course who he works with does affect how he plays. Even if one just looks at...
Every Matthew Shipp album is a major event. Not in the sense of a Lady Gaga album, accompanied by a relentless publicity campaign and hyped as a cultural upheaval of massive commercial significance. No, a Matthew Shipp album is a major event for jazz because he is one of the most important pianists alive, and also because he hardly ever rests on his laurels, comfortable in a circumscribed style -- he evolves from one album to the next in a nearly disconcerting way. Even though his playing is immediately recognizable -- one would never confuse him with any of the other pianists on the scene -- it shifts slightly from album to album.
This is not merely a matter of setting (solo, trio, duo) or collaborators, though of course who he works with does affect how he plays. Even if one just looks at...
- 11/16/2013
- by SteveHoltje
- www.culturecatch.com
Dheepa Chari: Some New Fashion (Dheepa Chari)
A young New York singer releasing her first full-length (after an Ep I haven't heard), Chari is part of the new breed of jazzers who are looking beyond standards for their repertoire. Not that other jazzers haven't already covered the Beatles (she sings "Here, There, and Everywhere") or Billy Joel (in my youth I heard Count Basie play "Just the Way You Are," which not only closes this album but also gives it its title), but I bet she's the first to take on Depeche Mode's "World in My Eyes" and Linkin Park's "Shadow of the Day." The funny thing is, as much as I was ready to look down my nose on the latter choice, it works beautifully, thanks not only to her vocal delivery but to Vikas Hebbar's lovely arrangement, which features violin and muted trumpet.
The majority of...
A young New York singer releasing her first full-length (after an Ep I haven't heard), Chari is part of the new breed of jazzers who are looking beyond standards for their repertoire. Not that other jazzers haven't already covered the Beatles (she sings "Here, There, and Everywhere") or Billy Joel (in my youth I heard Count Basie play "Just the Way You Are," which not only closes this album but also gives it its title), but I bet she's the first to take on Depeche Mode's "World in My Eyes" and Linkin Park's "Shadow of the Day." The funny thing is, as much as I was ready to look down my nose on the latter choice, it works beautifully, thanks not only to her vocal delivery but to Vikas Hebbar's lovely arrangement, which features violin and muted trumpet.
The majority of...
- 5/27/2012
- by SteveHoltje
- www.culturecatch.com
David Liebman - Richie Beirach Duo Cornelia St. Café, February 25, first set
Saxophonist David Liebman and pianist Richie Beirach have been working together at least since 1973, in the band Lookout Farm. Later they reteamed in the band Quest, and have had many duo collaborations as well. Fortunately for New Yorkers, the Brooklyn-born friends have in recent years made it a habit to get back together for a concert every February. Though that has usually been in the form of Quest, this year it was a duo at this intimate and much-loved Greenwich Village venue.
They opened with “Pendulum,” a Beirach tune they’ve been playing together for decades in various contexts. Nonetheless, like everything they played tonight, it sounded fresh. Beirach opened with tight dissonances over a bass drone; Liebman entered (on tenor sax) freely, then went into the theme. One of the pleasures of Beirach’s style is how...
Saxophonist David Liebman and pianist Richie Beirach have been working together at least since 1973, in the band Lookout Farm. Later they reteamed in the band Quest, and have had many duo collaborations as well. Fortunately for New Yorkers, the Brooklyn-born friends have in recent years made it a habit to get back together for a concert every February. Though that has usually been in the form of Quest, this year it was a duo at this intimate and much-loved Greenwich Village venue.
They opened with “Pendulum,” a Beirach tune they’ve been playing together for decades in various contexts. Nonetheless, like everything they played tonight, it sounded fresh. Beirach opened with tight dissonances over a bass drone; Liebman entered (on tenor sax) freely, then went into the theme. One of the pleasures of Beirach’s style is how...
- 2/26/2012
- by SteveHoltje
- www.culturecatch.com
Leo Records was founded in 1979 by Leo Feigin, a Russian who had emigrated to England. Early in its history, back before the glasnost era, it was most noted for releasing avant-garde Russian jazz at a time when government authorities discouraged the style. As Alexander Alexandrov of Moscow Composers Orchestra says, "What the authorities really hated was free jazz and improvised music – for the reason we loved it, because it was a powerful symbol of individual freedom." Although somehow the Ganelin Trio's first album came out on the official Soviet record label, Melodiya, it was the group's many albums on Leo that earned both the band and Leo world-wide reputations.
Eventually Leo expanded enough that it even had offshoots: Leo Lab for new artists, Golden Years of New Jazz for vintage material. Especially notable from the latter are four superb four-cd sets comprising a series entitled Golden Years of the Soviet...
Eventually Leo expanded enough that it even had offshoots: Leo Lab for new artists, Golden Years of New Jazz for vintage material. Especially notable from the latter are four superb four-cd sets comprising a series entitled Golden Years of the Soviet...
- 1/19/2012
- by SteveHoltje
- www.culturecatch.com
Jazz singer, actor and civil rights activist strongly influenced by Billie Holiday
If Abbey Lincoln was overwhelmed by the responsibility of being proclaimed "the last of the jazz singers", she never let it show. As her great contemporaries and principal influences among the classic female jazz vocalists fell away – with Billie Holiday the first to go, in 1959, and Betty Carter the last, in 1998 – Lincoln steadfastly maintained her dignified, almost solemn, focus; her tart, deftly timed Holiday-like inflections, and her commitment to songs that dug deeper into life's meanings than the usual lost-love exhalations.
And, like Ella Fitzgerald, who all her life took to a stage as if she were surprised to find anyone had come to see her, Lincoln became the opposite of a celebrated jazz diva. In some of her London performances during the 1990s, she would sit quietly beside the piano, tugging at her clothes, like someone who...
If Abbey Lincoln was overwhelmed by the responsibility of being proclaimed "the last of the jazz singers", she never let it show. As her great contemporaries and principal influences among the classic female jazz vocalists fell away – with Billie Holiday the first to go, in 1959, and Betty Carter the last, in 1998 – Lincoln steadfastly maintained her dignified, almost solemn, focus; her tart, deftly timed Holiday-like inflections, and her commitment to songs that dug deeper into life's meanings than the usual lost-love exhalations.
And, like Ella Fitzgerald, who all her life took to a stage as if she were surprised to find anyone had come to see her, Lincoln became the opposite of a celebrated jazz diva. In some of her London performances during the 1990s, she would sit quietly beside the piano, tugging at her clothes, like someone who...
- 8/15/2010
- by John Fordham
- The Guardian - Film News
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