Word: saxophonists
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...jazz-fusion, Marsalis champions core values: master the instrument, study the greats such as Monk and Ellington and dress and comport yourself with the dignity the music deserves. Though the battle for the music's soul goes on, the success of other young jazz stars in the '90s, from saxophonist Joshua Redman to pianist Eric Reed, is proof of Marsalis' influence. "I've played 150 concerts a year for 15 years," he says. "It helped to rebuild the jazz audience. Younger musicians see you play, and they get inspired to practice. Older musicians, maybe their confidence has sagged a little...
Sting, however, is Sting. In 1985, after almost a decade fronting the reggae-tinged rock band the Police, Sting launched a solo career with the release of The Dream of the Blue Turtles, a slickly adventurous album that featured saxophonist Branford Marsalis and keyboardist Kenny Kirkland. All Sting's six solo albums have been distinctive: The Dream of the Blue Turtles, with its anti-cold war rant Russians, was the most pointed; the 1991 release The Soul Cages, much of which concerns the death of Sting's father, was the most personal. Mercury Falling stands out as his most consistently...
...Live Bird" is both rich and dense, condensing in the short space of an hour the history, career, and demise of legendary alto-saxophonist Charlie Parker, who died at 35, wasted by drugs and alcohol. Robinson portrays Parker in the late stages of alcoholism, playing a final gig for desperately needed money. As Robinson mimes interaction with a bartender, a young interviewer, friends, and past-acquaintances at the bar, we learn the sad facts of Parker's short life: his estrangement from wife and child, his destitution in the wake of his fellow musicians' celebrity and success, and his inability...
Conceived as a Beat-type riff on the problems of race and disempowerment in the inner city, the play starts to careen out of control in the earliest minutes. While an unseen saxophonist plays, tableaus of conflict are played out on the stage. A young man (Kevin Crockett) fights with his preacher father (Tyrone Bean); a preposterous, grade-schooler's version of a prostitute (Melanie Futorian) fights with her john (Dwight Hart). Meanwhile, incredibly realistic-looking homeless people (Nick Linski and Tania Guimond), complete with filthy hair and that unsettling, rocking motion of the mentally disturbed, drift through the audience...
DIED. GERRY MULLIGAN, 69, the premier baritone saxophonist and a leading composer-arranger of the past four decades; of complications from a knee infection; in Darien, Connecticut. Though he oversaw the birth of "cool" jazz with Miles Davis in 1947, Mulligan defied classification, playing and writing with a distinctive pulse, wit and imagination. He conceived the "pianoless quartet," which paired his horn with Chet Baker's trumpet over bass and drums...