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Entries from August 2011

Mark Winkler, “Sweet Spot”

By: Edward Blanco Platinum-award-winning vocalist/lyricist Mark Winkler presents his tenth album as leader and follow up to his critically-acclaimed 2009 release, Till I Get It Right, with the sugar-coated twelve-piece Sweet Spot. Winkler surely “Gets it right” with this new album, where he offers a host of new material and includes four uncommon standards he [continue reading…]

Date: Aug 31st, 2011 · No Comments · Categories: Jazz News

Chuck Loeb “Plain ‘n’ Simple” Tweety Records

Glenn Astarita Chances are, and perhaps unknowingly, you’ve heard guitarist Chuck Loeb performing on TV scores and commercial jingles amid his comprehensive career, spanning jazz-fusion, contemporary jazz and music productions. As a first-call session ace, Loeb has been in the thick of matters, hearkening back to the 70s.

Date: Aug 31st, 2011 · No Comments · Categories: Jazz News

The MLK Memorial, Race Relations in the Jazz World, and the Turbulent 1960′s, with Jazz Activist Renatta DeBlase

As Washington DC welcomes the new Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial — and with “The Help” now dominating at the box office — Americans are reflecting upon the nation’s turbulent racial history, MLK’s contributions to the civil rights movement, and life under segregation. For author Renatta DeBlase, these events seem like yesterday. In the late [continue reading…]

Date: Aug 31st, 2011 · No Comments · Categories: Jazz News

Berklee BeanTown Jazz Festival Closing Night – The New Gary Burton Quartet at the BPC

Gary Burton’s debut release on Mack Avenue Records, Common Ground, is Burton’s first studio album since 2005, and introduces his latest band, the New Gary Burton Quartet, featuring guitarist Julian Lage, bassist Scott Colley, and drummer Antonio Sanchez. The group performs during the closing night concert of the 2011 Berklee BeanTown Jazz Festival. Burton, the Grammy-winning pioneer of the four-mallet vibraphone technique, has [continue reading…]

Date: Aug 31st, 2011 · No Comments · Categories: Jazz News

Francesco Turrisi: Fotografia

It would be simplistic to call pianist Francesco Turrisi an experimenter, though his music embraces myriad cultural influences, from his native Italy through the length and breadth of the Mediterranean, straddling the centuries, and imbibing from sources as diverse as baroque, Moorish airs and jazz; simplistic, because his music flows as naturally as a river follows its bed–it is in Turrisi and of him, and it guides him. As on Turrisi’s memorable debut, Si Dolce e il Tormento (Diatribe, 2009), there is no sense of striving to fuse, no sense of painstaking construction; on Fotografia, there is instead, a very natural sounding confluence of ideas and emotions…

Date: Aug 31st, 2011 · No Comments · Categories: Jazz CD Reviews

Bob Gluck Trio: Returning

The piano trio, in one form or another, has been a jazz staple since the 1930s, and consequently skews toward the familiar. Fortunately, there are those atypical artists who invite a deeper dive for the uninhibited.

Date: Aug 31st, 2011 · No Comments · Categories: Jazz CD Reviews

Kaz Simmons: Dandelions

Combining a voice of crystalline purity, a neat lyrical touch, some superb backing musicians and a few lushly romantic arrangements, Kaz Simmons’ Dandelions has a gorgeous heart and a few twists and turns that surprise, delight and occasionally mystify by turn. This is Simmons’ third album: the second on her own Fast Awake label, following 2007’s Different Smile. While she has referred to Dandelions as being “less jazz” than her previous recordings, which have featured standards like “Cheek To Cheek” and “Moon River,” it might be more accurate to refer to the music as “different jazz,” for she has by no means abandoned the genre, even if all of the songs here are original compositions and the core sound comes from her voice and finger-picked guitar.

Date: Aug 31st, 2011 · No Comments · Categories: Jazz CD Reviews