Jazz
“Learning to Listen” is less about a jazz journey than it is about a prodigiously talented artist for whom music came easily while his own life was a puzzle.
Read More“He’s someone who appears only once in a hundred years.”—Hermeto Pascoal
Read More“I like singing live; I try to sing well live, I try to prepare myself for the audience, for that room. And I care a great deal about singing live, because I think that’s the experience of jazz. Even if I’m singing Brazilian music.”
Read MoreOne doesn’t come away from a Wayne Shorter Quartet performance merely raving about individual accomplishments: the set on Sunday night never felt like just a compelling sequence of solos.
Read MorePeter Pullman deplores (without bathos) the wreckage of Bud Powell’s life and mourns (without tears) the consequent loss of so much masterful music. And his story of Powell’s life is even grimmer than the one we have previously been told.
Read MoreRalph Alessi’s compositions are flexible rather than tightly organized, yet their initial statements are strong enough to dominate even the freest group improvisations that follow.
Read MoreThe slow tempos on the whole didn’t hurt the show. People were there to hear Madeleine Peryoux — her voice and delivery, her offbeat arrangements and particular idiosyncratic take on familiar songs.
Read MoreAs the festival season draws to a close, a look back at the 2013 BeanTown Jazz Festival.
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Jazz Review / Commentary: Brian Carpenter’s Ghost Train Orchestra and Some Notes on “Irony”
Brian Carpenter and the Ghost Train Orchestra are not about re-creating either hot jazz from the ’20s or novelty works from the ’30s and ’40s. They’re interested in capturing the spirit that they perceive to be inside these almost-forgotten pieces and using that spirit to make original new music.
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