JazzWorldQuest - Jazz News With A Global Perspective

Wednesday, November 2, 2011

FRANCE: Vinicius Cantuaria, Jazz à l'Ouest, Guy Le Querrec

Vinicius Cantuaria, guitariste minimaliste qui polit disque après disque des sambas et des bossas extrêmement raffinées et épurées, sera en concert à Paris du 1er au 3 novembre au Duc des Lombards.

32 concerts pour la 22e édition de Jazz à l'Ouest
Programmée du 3 au 11 novembre, la 22e édition du festival Jazz à l'Ouest aura pour invités les chanteuses Youn Sun Nah, Laïka, le Kenny Werner Trio, le Joel Harrison Sextet, Alan Madec et Jacky Molard, etc. Au total, 32 concerts seront donnés dans sept salles de Rennes Métropole

Guy Le Querrec. Le jazz dans l'objectif
Le Centre atlantique de la photographie, à Brest, accueille jusqu'au 26novembre, une grande exposition de GuyLeQuerrec, de l'agence Magnum, consacrée aux musiciens de jazz.

Tuesday, November 1, 2011

Matija Dedic Trio - MD in NYC (Origin Records 2011)

Matija Dedic, Kendrick Scott, Vicente Arsher

Her Name (M. Dedic) • Slawenskaya (M. Dedic) • Update (M. Dedic) • Maiden Voyage (H. Hancock) • Angst (M. Dedic) • Blue In Green (M. Davis) • Cheekee Chicks (M. Dedic) • Fragile (Sting) • Jungle Blues (M. dedic) • If I Where a Boy (Toby Gad)

All About Jazz (Dan McClenaghan)
Pianist Matija Dedic's MD in NYC tiptoes into existence on a delicate rhythm, joined in short order by a sprinkling of crystalline notes in the melody, with a whisper of brushes and spare but assertive bass lines. "Her Name" is one of the pianist's five originals in the set, and has a wistful reverence that speaks, perhaps, to a yearning inf...

Stereophile (Thomas Conrad)
Jazz has become a truly international art form in the new millennium, and some of its most creative players now come from places like Zagreb, Croatia. What makes Matija Dedic special is his touch and the way his poetic concept unfolds and deepens over the course of an album. Dedic is as seductive as Tord Gustavsen. The opening of the first track he...

Jazz Scan (Ric Bang)
This album demonstrates anew that jazz truly is an international art. Matija Dedic, born in Croatia in 1973, began to play classical piano at age 5: a common path for Eastern European music students. He had broadened his interests by his 18th birthday, and he subsequently entered the Graz Jazz Academy. After graduation, he delivered his style of ja...

Cadence (David Franklin)
Matija Dedic is a 38-year-old Croatian piano virtuoso who has played around the world with leading Jazz performers, including a number of well-known Americans, and won numerous awards world-wide. Bassist Archer and drummer Scott both boast extensive, impressive credentials. The modern mainstream MD in NYCis Dedic’s second album and the firs...

Jazz Review (Thomas R. Erdmann)
"***** 5-Stars" Zagreb Croatia native, pianist and composer Matija Dedic earned a collegiate degree from the Jazz Academy in Graz, Austria. Dedic comes from a musical family; his father received musical awards and his mom sang with Louis Armstrong and Phil Woods. Some of Dedic's piano teachers have included jazz stalwarts Hal Galper and Barry Ha...

Origin Records

http://www.matijadedic.com/

Imelda May -Mayhem ( Decca 2011)

If there's an overlap between burlesque and rockabilly, Dubliner Imelda May Clabby embodies it. Visually, she's all skintight leopard-print and red lips; musically, she throws her considerable energies into a sharp mix of rockabilly, jazz and surf guitars. And, in her hands, rockabilly is a living, vital genre with nothing retro about it. She wrote virtually every song here (apart from a cover of Tainted Love, which has been rejigged as a feverish waltz for guitar, drums and voice), and sings them with heart and minxy humour. Whether the lurid cast of characters in the lyrics is real or imaginary – one is a "psycho" on medication, another lands "in a cell with grey pants and bruises" and then there's the "sneaky freak" who spies on her husband – doesn't matter. What does is that she brings them to passionate, reverb-drenched life on an album that positions her as one of 2010's more interesting finds.Caroline Sullivan / guardian.co.uk

SFJazz Collective-Live in New York 2011 · Season 8 3-CD Set

Recorded at The Jazz Standard in New York City, across a five-night run, Live in New York 2011 · Season 8 is the definitive document of the Collective’s 2011 repertoire, including fresh arrangements of Stevie Wonder classics and original compositions by group members.
Featuring Miguel Zenón (alto saxophone), Mark Turner (tenor saxophone), Avishai Cohen (trumpet), Robin Eubanks (trombone), Stefon Harris (vibraphone), Edward Simon (piano), Matt Penman (bass), and Eric Harland (drums).
sfjazz

Chico Hamilton-Revelation ( Joyous Shout! 2011)

In March of 2011, with his 90th birthday six months off, legendary jazz drummer/bandleader & NEA Jazz Master Foreststorn ‘Chico’ Hamilton trekked out of his New York City penthouse apartment to helm a marathon recording session resulting in 28 new tracks with his Euphoria group @ Manhattan Sound Recording Studios on midtown’s west side.

No one woodsheds like a jazz drummer, and coming off a health setback during the Summer of 2010, Chico and his Euphoria group: Paul Ramsey on bass; Nick Demopoulos on guitar; Evan Schwam on saxes, flute & piccolo; Mayu Saeki on flute, alto flute & piccolo; and Jeremy Carlstedt on drums and percussion; began sheding @ weekly rehearsals @ Chico’s Penthouse A. These weekly rehearsals played an important part in Chico’s rehabilitation, facilitated Chico and his group becoming very tight with each other and exploring places musically they had not previously gone together, and brought together a wealth of new original material, offered up in three courses, each of which is a different viewpoint of Chico’s Revelation.

The Revelation CD- With 11 tracks exclusive to this format, Revelation opens and closes with a focus on Chico @ his drum kit, and in-between takes us on a different journey from both the melodic and rhythmic points of view. From the up-tempo Latin groove of “Evanly” with it’s vocal out chorus; the mid tempo swing of “No Way LA” & “Ten Minutes To Twelve”; the Lunceford-like band vocals on “Stompin’ @ The Savoy” & “It Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t Got that Swing)”; to Chico’s vocalizing on “Every Time I Smile”; the pastoral melodic beauty of “You’re Note Alone”; the up-tempo funk of “Black Eyed Peas”; and the bossa funkiness of “Foot Prints in the Sand” with its starkly beautiful vocal out chorus- every track is like turning a page in a book that’s holding you on the edge of your seat, your rapt attention dieing to know what’s next to be revealed. And indeed what a revelation are these 22 tracks!!

From the Revelation CD liner notes by Maxwell Chandler: ”The excitement of new works from Chico is not derived from any absence as he has not stopped, nor is it due to the curiosity factor of seeing what type of artistic phase he is entering into. He does not create in that manner or care about such things, bringing the best of what he has found with him even if only as a component to further his forward moving trajectory. The excitement is due to the knowledge that here is an addition to the oeuvre of an artist who is the rare to find, possessor of freedom derived equally from intellect and soul.”

Happy 90th Birthday Chico!!
CDBABY