Jazz Artist Interviews (709)
Get up close and personal with your favorite jazz artists!
"Let someone start believing in you Let him find you and watch what happens" well defines the concept of this disk as to its purpose, poise, and performance! It is also what ignites the power within - to dance with a dream Charito’s dream! The most dynamic occurrence in the creative process is when two minds from diverse plains cultivate and design, not by plan, an extraordinary gratification in sound. This translates into a blueprint of a legacy (Michel Legrand) and a lady (Charito), buil …
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Brenda Hopkins Miranda is a talented pianist, composer, arranger, improviser, band leader, writer and educator born in San Juan, Puerto Rico. An exceptional and natural rhythmic inventor, she conjures up her own worlds - some jagged, others even more broken and interrupted. And she is good at it, putting the notes in the right places. Her repertoire includes original arrangements of traditional and contemporary Puerto Rican, Caribbean and Latin American songs and well as her own compositions. …
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JAZZREVIEW: When did you discover you had a talent for singing? WHITNEY JAMES: I was always singing and performing and choreographing shows at home from the time I was 5, my sister and friends were the cast and my Mom would hold a flash light as a spotlight. We would charge 10 cents a seat and have a stage, curtains everything. We sang and danced, and had a ball. I am sure that is where all my love of music started. My life was very full of music and my parents were b …
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Peggy Lee is one of the most underrated jazz vocalists of all time. We hear about Billie Holliday and Ella Fitzgerald, but seldom do we hear about a woman who not only had the voice, but also the knack for writing songs that did tell a story well. Now Canadian vocalist Carol Welsman salutes this special woman with a new compilation of songs called I Like Men: Reflections of Miss Peggy Lee. Even though at first glance there is little connection between the two singers, Welsman has alway …
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Walter Beasley wants you to relax, and his upcoming CD, Sax Meditations, appears to be just what the doctor ordered. Sax Meditations is the haunting, ethereal, half-sibling to Beasley's 2009 smooth jazz gem Free Your Mind. Sax Meditations seems determined to, well, free your mind. Recently, I spoke to the saxophonist/vocalist/educator about the sound and vision of his latest release. JazzReview: You recorded Sax Meditations around the same time you we …
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For those of you who have been subjected to Karaoke, my heartfelt apologies from the music industry. The vocally-challenged often flock to these staged events, filled with the juice from the fountain of ego...thus subjecting the innocent to cries of pain and anguish. Sorry Simon, you did not invent this absurdity. One night, however, in 2003, at the Club Med in Bora Bora, an uncut diamond took the Karaoke stage and in a short three weeks, attained the dream stardom lore is built upon. Classicall …
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The duo of bassist Mark Saltman and keyboardist William Knowles makes music that finds optimism through the crackles made by life’s sorrow and despair. Saltman draws inspiration for his compositions from such tragedies as the devastation of New Orleans after being hit by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and the scars left by The Holocaust which prompted the title track for the duo’s latest CD, Yesterday’s Man. Accompanied by vocalist Lori Williams-Chisholm, Yesterday’s Man is club-roo …
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When guitarist Rob Tardik sets his mind on a project, it is as good as done. He can corral a band of musicians and accomplish his task with the expediency and astute calculations which Martha Stewart applies when she is rounding up a crew to plant a new garden. Both Tardik and Stewart understand the need for everyone to be on the same page and stay focused on their single-minded objective. For Tardik, his objective was to make a follow up record to his debut album Without Words. He tel …
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It looks like the return of the Rat Pack, but three smooth jazz sax men continue to come together to bring their individual stylings to one of the best collaborations in years. Jeff Kashiwa, Steve Cole and Kim Waters are known as The Sax Pack and show some of the traits of Frank, Sammy and Dean, musical ability, good looks, chemistry, charm and wit. Between the three men, Jeff, Steve and Kim have 20 smooth jazz radio hits and have sold tens of thousands of albums. Some people find it hard to …
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Sometimes the greatest challenge for a singer is taking the leap into making a debut album. The exposure opens them up to receive public scrutiny and global adulation. For the artist, it is always impossible to predict how the public will react. Luckily for singer-songwriter Kelley Suttenfield, she has the vocal chops to attract hordes of people, the charisma to make a lasting impression on their minds, and a passionate delivery that can penetrate their hearts. Suttenfield’s mix of int …
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It is very easy to assume that every track on Ellynne Plotnick’s new album, Life Is Beautiful is a cover of a jazz standard created by one of the Gershwins or Cole Porter or Johnny Mercer. The songs have the smooth flowing lines relatable to Porter, the graceful swells often attributed to the Gershwins, and an alluring orchestration liken to Johnny Mercer. Although it may seem to most folks that the jazz artists of yesteryear cornered the market on melodic beauty, Plotnick shows that s …
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The origins of "Rumba Foundation" can be traced back to the 1800’s when sailors arrived in Spain with a new rhythm named rumba brought all the way from Cuba. This accessible and upbeat style of flamenco has attracted people across the globe. Rumba flamenco music reflects the soul of the gypsies, the passion of flamenco and the irresistible beats of Cuba. Influenced by Natacha Atlas, Al Di Meola, Paco de Lucia, Peter Gabriel, Vicente Amigo and the Gipsy Kings, the charismatic rumba …
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Music has been known to soothe broken hearts, to tame wild animals, and to tell stories through sonic imagery. Filmmaker, writer, producer, and Ruby Flower Records executive Ana-Isabel Ordonez is a conceptual artist who utilizes the talents of avant-garde musicians to give her films another dimension that penetrates the listeners emotions beyond the visuals and narrations. She brought the two mediums of film and music together in her two previous projects, A Touch Of Noir and Shades …
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Channeling her multi-cultured background that includes German, Angolan, and Native American Indian ancestries, singer-songwriter Kristina Smith delves into a litany of influences to bring out a rich palette of textures steep in Afro-Cuban rhythms, swing-inspired motifs, and flowery ballads on her debut album Offshore Echoes from Patois Records. She describes how the album fulfilled her innermost needs. "I call these choices of songs my ‘wish list songs’. I wanted to share the message w …
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German born and bred pianist/composer Monika Herzig has a flare for putting an eclectic twist on traditional jazz idioms, and she makes no exceptions on her interpretation of classic holiday tunes for her forthcoming CD, Peace On Earth. Fraught with decorative furls and spontaneous chutes, Herzig’s album injects boasters to familiar holiday sing-along numbers like "The Coventry Carol" and "Silent Night’ producing bursts of freestyle energy rimming the main themes. Her improvisations ac …
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To celebrate their 30th anniversary, the group Hiroshima goes back to the first ten years of their musical existence. Instead of re-releasing tracks from that first decade, leader Dan Kuromoto decided to re-record those songs on their newest CD Legacy. He says, we really didn't feel like doing the best ofs. We didn't know what that means really. When you have 17 CDs, how do you do a best of. Actually we then put it on our website and asked people to submit what they thought were their …
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Paul Carlon has built a reputation for himself in the chamber-jazz quarter as the bandleader, composer and saxophonist for the Paul Carlon Octet, and as a motivating force of Latin-jazz in the New York City-based ensemble Grupo los Santos. But recently, he has taken on an additional role as the saxophonist and co-writer for The McCarron Brothers. The quartet has become his outlet to indulge his craving for American roots/smoky blues-jazz music, where he has settled into a stride t …
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When American author Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote the novel, Tarzan, he provided people with an impression of what a man would be like if he lived in the jungle and bonded with nature, taking its life forms into his bosom like a close member of his family. Similarly, composer-drummer-percussionist Zlatko Kau
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does the same with his music, treating nature like it is a family member, corresponding with it and respecting its space. Kau
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is a man who is inspired by …
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Milford Graves, keynote speaker from Bennington College, International Centre for Medicinal and Scientific Studies - Topic: Tono Rhythmology and Biocosmology: New paradigms for creating a unified all-pervasive music. Originally, I was to have interviewed Professor Graves by phone. When I called him at his home in N.Y.C he asked how long this was going to take. "As long as you like", I replied. He explained to me that he was still packing and had to catch an early flight for his keynote addres …
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Trumpeter Curt Ramm, saxophonist Dan Moretti and pianist Bill Cunliffe excel in a myriad of musical settings; funk, fusion, Latin, r&b and classical. However, their true love is straight-ahead, soulful and grooving jazz. This common ground is the seed that germinated The Foundations Jazz Record label and as a result of this, we have the product of their first collaboration, Foundations. The new CD combines their skills as soloists, composers and creative forces. Foun …
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It is Monday, June 8th 2009 and I am at home drinking a very good cup of coffee, while on the phone with Ezra Weiss. We have finally connected after playing an intense game of phone tag for a week or two. It feels amazing to finally have the opportunity to interview one of the true originals in jazz music and jazz education. One rarely gets the opportunity to talk with someone so passionate, yet so humble, about teaching young people and his deep appreciation for jazz music. Ezra Weiss i …
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Dissecting and sculpting opinions concerning the new tour of blues sounds has always dropped me off at my own crossroads. Just left of wax center, extremes of rhythms and vocal curves that stretch the traditional concepts of the textbooks become a welcome exploit for me. Whether the stylistic bending in blues is welcome or forbidden by traditional masses and talking heads, it is always an unworthy indulgence to have a sit-n-spin among the fresh and pioneering channels of echoes to come. I …
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Composer/arranger/violinist Noel Webb is like a human sponge, able to absorb a multitude of influences from different sources of art found in the works of musicians, filmmakers and literary writers. He asserts, "Artists should dive into any and every form of creative art and literature that they can get their hands on. Then, they should explore every aspect of those areas that time and money will allows. All art and literature, yes literature." He emphasizes will explode you …
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When guitarist Craig Chaquico records a CD, you can expect a lot of moods in it. He says, I like the album to be sort of like a good movie or a good book that takes you on a journey that interests you so it touches your emotions. A good book or a good movie can have the action scenes in it, but it can't all be action. It's got to have the romance scene, it's got to have something that touches your emotions. No matter who we are, we don't even need to know each other, we all have these same em …
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Saturated in a legacy, ignited by a deep inbred passion, Zakiya Hooker takes the blues from the past and allows the future to extract her signature sound. Influenced by her icon father John Lee, Zakiya directs us out of the crossroads, with her new jewel box Keeping it Real. Ms. Hooker is a direct and focused vocalist, both in her philosophy of life, and her style. She intermingles her faith and father (John Lee Hooker), crediting both for her journey thus far. This is what makes …
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