Steve Provizer
This is not a music documentary, it’s a kind of jaunty-artsy immersion in and around the Newport Jazz festival, including scenes of the host city Newport, the America’s Cup race, festival goers, kids in playgrounds, etc.
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If there’s ever been a more distinctive jazz musician than Rahsaan Roland Kirk, you’ll have to prove it to me.
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The final, ineluctable quality that Ornette Coleman brought to the table was that he had an individual “voice,” which is the sine qua non and preeminent ethos in jazz.
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“Ornette was looking for those notes, the ones that feel no pain.”
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The playing on this 1979 album, which would generally be considered as flawed, is part of the singular (mature) Chet Baker gestalt.
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The advantage of localism enjoyed by a club down the block disappears in cyberspace.
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This is virtuosity-driven chamber music with fluctuating levels of oxygen, shadows, and light.
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A review of the 60th anniversary reissue of Frank Sinatra’s album Nice ‘n’ Easy. Though not without a few rounds with the Sinatra mythology — not the complicated man, but his music.
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One of the show’s impressive accomplishments is that its creators managed to find musicians who could act.
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Music Commentary: The Catechism of Jazz Critical Cliches
A cautionary list of cliches, accumulated during a lifetime’s observation, for the next generation of jazz critics — and readers of same.
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