Steve Elman

Jazz Review: Sheila Jordan with the Yoko Miwa Trio at Thelonious Monkfish

December 16, 2016
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Sheila Jordan, to the club crowd in Central Square: “What do I care? I’m still alive.”

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Jazz Review: Chucho Valdés – Joe Lovano Quintet at the Berklee Performance Center — Molto Vivo

November 11, 2016
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Intense head music and powerful foot music, but this show needed a little more heart.

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Jazz Review: Danilo Pérez & Jazz 100 at Sanders Theater — Surprise after Surprise

October 20, 2016
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With an artist as focused and sharp as Danilo Pérez as its musical director, Jazz 100 makes you sit up straight and hang on every note.

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Jazz Performance and CD Review / Commentary: Jane Ira Bloom’s “Wild Lines” and “Early Americans”

August 17, 2016
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Exposing the jazz impulses in Emily Dickinson’s poetry is not an agenda for the novice.

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Book Review and Commentary: Testaments to the Wonderful Ears of Ralph J. Gleason

July 26, 2016
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A writer has to write for the now or to write for the ages. Gleason almost always chose the now, but his best moments go deeper.

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Music Review/Commentary: Anat Cohen’s Tentet & SFJAZZ Collective — Strength in Numbers

May 5, 2016
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Jazz groups of eight to eleven often make fascinating and unusual music, but they rarely survive.

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Book Review and Appreciation: Murray Talks Music, and So Much More — the Legacy and Lessons of Albert Murray

May 2, 2016
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Murray Talks Music shows how brilliant Albert Murray could be even when he didn’t have time to polish his prose.

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Music Review/Commentary: David Bowie’s “Blackstar” and Norbert Stein’s “Das Karussell” — When Words Rule Music

February 16, 2016
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Both David Bowie and Norbert Stein present distinctive and subtle approaches to the hybridizing of poetry and music.

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Classical Music Review/Commentary: BSO / Pianist Kirill Gerstein – Whose America?

July 20, 2015
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The BSO’s Americana concert could only provide four beautiful snapshots of a very complicated landscape.

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Music Commentary: Jazz and the Piano Concerto — Ave Sine Vale

July 2, 2015
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The great mistake we make as listeners or viewers is passivity. Music deserves and needs our active involvement.

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