Word: jazzing
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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DIED. BENNY WATERS, 96, jazz's ebullient elder statesman who toured with and taught some of the genre's greats; in Columbia, Md. A saxophonist, clarinetist and arranger, Waters was playing jazz before jazz was officially created. In the '20s and '30s he played nightclubs in New York City's Harlem with Benny Carter, among others, and was a member of the house band at the Apollo Theatre; but partly because of his legendary carousing, he never achieved the fame enjoyed by many of his colleagues. Blind from failed cataract surgery since 1992, he continued his hectic international touring schedule...
Here's the pedigree: this 30-year-old alto saxophonist is an ex-member of the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra and a former regular at Small's, the dingy Manhattan club that has become a key incubator of young talent. His playing is plenty soulful on his second CD--so you'd think, given the title--but with a dry, sometimes acerbic tone that gives the album a haunting edge; listeners may be reminded of John Coltrane's way with a ballad or the blues. As a composer, Irby has a gift for melody, and there are so many fine...
...clever, surface ones. This CD, recorded live, is a breakthrough, thanks in no small part to the fact that his trio (with bassist Ugonna Okegwo and drummer Leon Parker) has been playing together for more than six years--a rarity in the harsh economic climate of today's jazz world. On a set of standards sprinkled with Terrasson originals, the trio plays softly and sparely, at times swinging as much by implication as by force. Melodies have a way of slithering unexpectedly out of laid-back, nearly ambient grooves, heard as if for the first time. It's a rich...
These days some of the best jazz singing is turning up in the pop-record racks. Nineteen-year-old Esthero, singer of a Toronto trip-hop duo that bears her name, is the newest member of the school of so-called blue-groove vocalists (it includes Skye Edwards of Morcheeba and Tracey Thorn of Everything but the Girl), who use the delivery and seductive lilt of jazz to bring warmth to chilly avant-garde pop. Esthero's debut with her co-writer and producer, Doc (Martin McKinney), weaves hip-hop, drum and bass, funk and ska into tunes full...
Album titles that sound like Zen koans are almost always a sign of musical vapidity (New Age alert!). But not here. On his seventh disc as a leader, this adventurous 27-year-old jazz pianist justifies the title's paradox with playing that is full of odd stops and starts and tonal shifts, all of which he negotiates with delicacy rather than flash. This is music that manages to be both prickly and soothing--like anxious lullabies (to suggest another unappetizing title). Though Keezer gives himself three solo numbers--a highlight being his gentle deconstruction of Lush Life--the heart...