Bebop

The first real jazz concert that I saw was a Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola. Now this may not be one of the most ideal spots to listen to jazz but it’s still an experience I will never forget. I attended one of the late night sessions which began around 11pm. The featured musician that was going to play was Josh Bruneau. After some research I found that Josh Bruneau is a fairly new jazz musician. Although he has been playing jazz for a long time he wasn’t recognized until the release of his…

The saxophone proved to gain acceptance when it came to America. Oddly enough, a woman by the name Elise Boyer Hall (1853-1924) was the first to perform on and let the United States know how truly incredible the saxophone is. She began learning the saxophone while she was recovering from typhoid fever. She commissioned many solo works from world renowned composer that had written for this new instrument. A few of these composers include Richard Strauss, Claude Debussy and Georges Bizet.…

Shaw ‘Nuff by Dizzy Gillespie and His All-Star Quintet may come across as swing after only a single play but, as the ear parses out what it is actually hearing, it begins to sound more like a combination of the best parts of swing and traditional jazz. The quintet is composed of a saxophone, trumpet, piano, double bass, and drums. The trumpet has its own unique sound, which could come from either a mute or the style in which the musician is playing. The bass does more than keep time, which is…

Louis Armstrong is the father of jazz. Personally, I am not a music aficionado by any means but even I know who Louis Armstrong is. For him to collaborate with Earl Hines meant a lot to the development of jazz. The reason for this they were two of the most talented jazz musicians ever. What really made this important however is their different skill sets. Louis Armstrong was a wizard at the trumpet while Earl Hines was a magician at the keys. This collaboration showed how you can seamlessly…

The masterful, classic composition “Potato Head Blues” by legendary musician Louis Armstrong and his Hot Seven band is widely regarded today as one of Armstrong’s finest recordings. This song is a quick-paced jazz melody with the trumpet along with the piano providing what I believe is to be a 4 beat per measure rhythm. “Potato Head Blues” also sounds different from that of Joplin Rags since I counted 2 beats per measure. The song also does not seem to have much variation with a constant…

Jazz-Rock has been defined as music that has combined elements of both Jazz and Rock ‘N’ Roll, and is usually performed on amplified electric instruments (Dictionary.com). Jazz-Rock is often called fusion or cross over and is accompanied by bass lines, drumming styles and Rock music (Britannica.com). It tends to put an emphasis on electric instruments and dance rhythms and in the 1960s jazz tunes began to include Rock rhythms, those elements have contrasted and enhanced each other (Britannica).…

Ornette Coleman (or in full- Randolph Denard Ornette Coleman) was born in Texas on the 9th of March 1930 and died last year (2015) on the 11th of June, in New York. He was a saxophonist, composer, and bandleader. He released loads of albums over the span of his career and is known to be one of the most important initiators of free jazz. When Ornette Coleman was a child he played alto, then moved onto tenor saxophone in his teenage years. His early style of jazz was influenced not only by…

Attending for the first time a jazz restaurant was a great experience; I attended Jazz Kitchen at Downtown Disney. The restaurant has a New Orleans style jazz club upstairs, it has New Orleans dining rooms and an outdoor Jazz balcony. When we arrived we noticed the presence of the restaurant has contemporary art made out of wrought iron. At the center of the waiting area, there’s a water fountain made out of Jazz instruments, such as trumpets, saxophones, clarinets, and flutes. The restaurant is…

Saxophonist Odean Pope delighted the audience with fabulous arrangements of acknowledged tunes with his expansive Saxophone Choir. The sparkling harmonic sequences led to soulful approaches and the balance between the improvised and the arranged was awesome. They kicked in with “To the Roach”, a piece dedicated to the drummer Max Roach, and proceeded with bubbling sax improvisations on “Coltrane Time”, Pope’s ballad “Cis” and an Afro-Latin piece packed with baritone fills whose title I couldn’t…

Marc Copland is a tremendous jazz pianist with a special ability to create stunning atmospheres with unrugged textures. Having collaborated in the recent years with the virtuous bassist Gary Peacock (Now This and Tangents) and the late guitarist John Abercrombie (39 Steps and Up and Coming), Copland never turned his back to his personal projects, which usually overflow with melodic sensibility and strong rhythmic discernment. The compositions included in Better By Far, his newest work, were…