THE HEAT IS ON This was the summer of the lethal outdoor concert, the summer when the old adage, “Once you live here, you don’t notice the heat,” was put to the test. The adage lost. Standing in the broiling sun listening to music has its own kind of charm…
It seems like the Yellowjackets have gathered their fair share of the nectar. The jazz-fusion band has held together for 13 years in spite of numerous personnel changes. Its albums have been nominated for Grammys five times and won twice. This year, to mark its tenth year of recording, the…
Not all is running perfectly at the world’s largest jazz festival. It’s 2:30 a.m. in the Dutch concert hall in which the North Sea Jazz Festival is being held. Trumpeter Lester Bowie sits backstage, waiting to go on with his band Brass Fantasy. The situation threatens disaster for the jazzman…
A new-age musician who has the audacity to call the music boring? Unlike most in new-age pianist David Lanz’s chosen genre, he seems to have a sense of humor. He even gives indications of refusing to take the music’s touchy, feely trip seriously. In a recent concert, he introduced one…
In new-age music’s cast of characters, Mark Isham plays the part of the Seducer. The trumpeter has made a career of following increasingly darker musical directions, slowly luring the crystal crowd into the shadows with him. His latest release Mark Isham is such a heavy, overcast effort, it seems as…
Trumpeter Clark Terry and saxophonist James Moody could hang up their horns and retire to swatting porch flies. After all, these two jazz patriarchs have racked up more than ninety years between them, playing with the greatest. Terry appeared with Lionel Hampton, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, and Thelonious Monk, and…
Chick Corea is a certifiable musical multiple personality. The 49-year-old pianist is a jazz Sybil bouncing from one distinct character to another with nearly every album. There’s Chick the Fusion Whiz, Chick the Latin Romantic, Chick the Avant-Gardist and most recently, Chick the Conservative Standard Bearer. Jazzbos of every bias…
Anyone with a record collection more than a foot wide probably owns a piece of David Sanborn’s unmistakable sound but doesn’t know it. The Stones’ Undercover, Bruce Springsteen’s Born to Run, and David Bowie’s Young Americans all benefit from Sanborn’s wailing alto sax. He’s backed up James Brown, Stevie Wonder,…
Break out the Chivas. Dim the lights. Switch on the CD player. The blue-eyed king of heartbreak is back, Jack. Frank’s just turned 75, which is as good a reason as any to get all hot and bothered over his legacy. Both Capitol and Warner Bros./Reprise Records have simultaneously cracked…
Prowl through our hit list of 1990’s killer tunes, lyrics and riffs 1. FASTER PUSSYCAT Rubaiyat “You’re So Vain” (Elektra). For anyone who’s ever secretly desired to headbang to Carly Simon, here’s a chance to get off royally. 2. JANET JACKSON Rhythm Nation: 1814 “Black Cat” (A&M). Doing her best…
Whether they like it or not, the Blazing Redheads are one of the more confrontational groups on today’s music scene. But it’s not the San Francisco band’s “rhythmo-fusion” sound–a percussive concoction of danceable rhythms reaching from Africa to Brazil by way of jazz and R&B–that gives its audiences pause. Simply,…
Three years have slipped by since the last Michael Franks release–a risky lapse for an artist who continues to rely on radio airplay for exposure. But Franks is accustomed to tempting the specter of career failure. For starters, he offers a hybrid of jazz, R&B and pop that defies marketing…
Life could be worse for Kenny G. The saxophonist’s latest release, a double live disc, hasn’t left the Billboard Top Contemporary Jazz Albums chart for the past forty weeks. He’s also been been fortunate enough to further his career by recording with Whitney Houston, Smokey Robinson, Aretha Franklin and, most…
When Bud Gould invited Charlie Parker and a few other musicians into a Kansas studio fifty years ago, he had no idea that history was in the making. Gould, a former NAU music professor now living in Sedona, had just graduated from Wichita University. While waiting to be drafted for…
On the surface, Harry Connick Jr. would have to rank as one of the entertainment industry’s foremost opportunists. With his soundtrack album to the film When Harry Met Sally . . . , the 22-year-old star has already accomplished a nearly impossible feat–turning a jazz record platinum. This fall, Connick’s…
When Jack DeJohnette invited Herbie Hancock and Pat Metheny into the studio recently, it seemed like the drummer was assembling jazz’s Masters of the Universe. Name most any landmark jazz event of the past three decades, and there’s a good chance at least one of them has been there. In…
