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.
If there’s ever been a more distinctive jazz musician than Rahsaan Roland Kirk, you’ll have to prove it to me.
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.
“Ornette was looking for those notes, the ones that feel no pain.”
The playing on this 1979 album, which would generally be considered as flawed, is part of the singular (mature) Chet Baker gestalt.
The advantage of localism enjoyed by a club down the block disappears in cyberspace.
This is virtuosity-driven chamber music with fluctuating levels of oxygen, shadows, and light.
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.
One of the show’s impressive accomplishments is that its creators managed to find musicians who could act.
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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