Plunged into a world of 1930s swing bands – Fletcher Henderson, Chick Webb, Jimmie Lunceford and, yes, Count Basie and Duke Ellington — for an upcoming piece in the Playboy Jazz Festival program,  I was in need of some temporal balance, a contemporary counterpoint. Via my high school library’s subscription…

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Of all the electric keyboardists to come out of the fusion era, Zawinul was the most organic,  most human. His synthesizer spanned an array of natural sounds–including Wayne Shorter’s tenor–and his use of voice through the Vocoder made his music take on folklorique, even choral qualities.

This natural quality of Zawinul’s…

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Pianist Anat Fort’s work is known for its mood, sense of touch, use of space and a feel for the exotic. Her latest recording And If assumes these qualities in less obvious ways, giving the music a natural and holistic feel. In a sense, she’s brought new subtleties to her subtlety.

That’s…

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A feature in the March Downbeat on the classical influence in Brad Mehldau’s Highway Rider fails to mention one thing: his previous recording.  Conceived under producer Jon Brion, Largo was a turning point in Mehdau’s style,  showcasing different  instrumentation and styles.  Mehldau even plays vibes on a number of cuts.

Critics were quick to note…

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The Rabbit’s always thought the jazz-poll category “Talent Deserving Wider Recognition” was bogus or, at best, mislabeled. What jazz musician, with the exception of one or two, doesn’t deserve wider recognition? Even the best of them are widely unknown to the general public.

Consider Charles Owens. A fixture on the Los Angeles…

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I thought something was wrong with me as a kid in Newark…I saw the way people of color were treated. Then I thought, Wait a minute.    There’s  nobody in the world that’s better than me. Nobody. And by the same token, I’m not better than anyone else.–James Moody

When James Moody died…

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John McLaughlin was a 27-year-old, relatively unknown guitarist in 1969 when he arrived in the U.S. from England to join drummer Tony Williams’ Lifetime band with organist Larry Young. His background was broad and without category.  He had been brought up by a concert violinist mother to love classical music,…

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Pianist,composer and bandleader Chick Corea is one of the jazz genre’s most unique and diverse artists. One of his earliest recordings, Now He Sings, Now He Sobs, is a landmark piano trio recording. His stint with Miles Davis, who encouraged him to explore the electric piano, changed the sound of jazz…

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In his liner notes to Miles Davis’ post-Bitches Brew recording At Fillmore: Live At the Fillmore East, Morgan Ames quotes J.J. Johnson on Miles’ new direction. “If you put Miles and his new group in the studio and recorded them on spearate mikes, and then you cut the band track and…

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Spirituality has long haunted the music of guitarist John McLaughlin.  But its a different kind of spirituality than commonly accepted.  Serenity is replaced by driven purpose sometime almost furious in its speed and direction. The organic is overcome by the electric. The enlightened sense of  “taking it as it comes” …

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