Word: jazz
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Along with Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington and Charlie Parker, the legendary tenor saxophonist Lester Young is considered one of the seminal figures in the history of jazz. From his first recorded solo in 1936 through his small group sessions with Billie Holiday and his memorable stint with the Count Basie Orchestra, Young (known as "Pres," short for "President of the Tenor Saxophone") created some of the most memorable recordings in American music. Douglas Henry Daniels, a professor of History and Black Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, has spent more than two decades investigating the legend of Lester...
...that. He'll theorize at length about what music Young's father might have heard as a young man, but won't discuss how being torn away from his mother at a tender age might have damaged the psyche of one of the most sensitive men ever to play jazz. (When Young, late in life, leaves his own wife and children, it gets barely a mention...
Kenny Garrett has nothing to prove. In his early days, he played alto saxophone with Miles Davis and in subsequent years has served as a sideman for such jazz luminaries as Art Blakey and Herbie Hancock. Since the very beginning of his career, Garrett has never had to go out of his way to demonstrate his playing ability. Yet that is precisely the impression that he gave at Sculler’s Jazz Club as he took the stage with his quartet last Thursday...
...Down & One Across” while Garrett positively screamed into his horn. Dave repeatedly called for the piano monitor of Vernell Brown to be turned up, instead of adjusting the level of his own playing. Something was amiss. Instead of easing his audience into his jazz-pop aesthetic, Garrett’s opening was an indigestible attack. In an evening centered around compositions from Garrett’s latest album Happy People, it was hit or miss whether the group would hit its stride...
...returned and rolled into “Happy People,” a funk-laced ditty featuring a catchy bridge and an irresistible groove. As if making up for his earlier alienation, Garrett welcomed his audience back to his music by exhorting them to sing along. This was what jazz is supposed to be about—interplay with the audience, communication between band members and spontaneous creativity. Garrett was at his absolute best when he stayed within—but was not constrained by—the structure of his chord changes, but he did that all too infrequently...