by S. Victor Aaron Using large ensembles as vehicles for improvised music is hardly a new proposition, but can be one of the riskiest ones. After all, the more musicians involved, the more likelihood that one or more them won’t be on the same page and thus the greater potentialRead More

We’re not even four months into 2009 and already we’re here for the third time since February celebrating a new Chick Corea release. In February, it was piano/piano face-off with Hiromi called Duet, in March it was the live document of Return To Forever’s triumphant return Returns, and today it’sRead More

by Pico As before, this Quickies is an opportunity to highlight new offerings by some lesser-known jazz artists out there today. The thought crossed my mind to throw in a big name like Neil Young, but we kind of covered his Fork In The Road record last week in aRead More

A lot of best and most successful jazz artists come from the best music programs: Berklee, Manhattan School of Music, and Julliard, have all produced countless musicians who’ve gone on to make big impacts on jazz. But when talking about fertile breeding grounds for jazz greats, the University of NorthRead More

by Pico Times have changed a lot since Neil Young began his music career in the mid-sixties but Young’s keen awareness of the times hasn’t. And if he’s passionate about what he sees in front of him, you’ll likely see him put out music about it when the issue isRead More

This installment of Quickies is aimed at introducing to you, Dear Reader, some amazing jazz musicians who may not have shown up on your radar screen yet: Jake Hertzog Chromatosphere Here’s a guitarist who is a 2007 graduate of Berklee, won the Montreaux Jazz Guitar Competition the prior year, cameRead More

Like Dave Holland, Derrick Gardner is following the axiom of “more is…” more. Allow me to explain… One of the hottest jazz combos of the last decade has been the Dave Holland Quintet. Recently, Holland decided to shake things up a bit and expanded his quintet to a sextet. TheRead More

by S. Victor Aaron John Scofield isn’t regarded as the top two or three jazz guitarists of the last couple of decades just because he’s such a great guitar player. The thing that sets him apart from almost all the others is his ability to play a different style ofRead More

by S. Victor Aaron Late last year I covered a new release by David Weiss’ New Jazz Composers Octet, The Turning Gate. The names found in this band aren’t household names, but the high level of musicianship and composition writing savvy by every member of this collective nevertheless makes thisRead More

by Pico We’ve been long overdue for another “Quickies,” as there’s been way more new releases to talk abput than there’s time to talk (as usual). Nonetheless, the show must go on and the word has to get out. This variation has a certain theme. Well, sort of. We startRead More