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4 days ago | 
jazzjournal.co.uk | Andy Hamilton
Ricky Riccardi, Director of Research Collections for the Louis Armstrong House Museum in New York, began his trilogy of biographies with the intention of reappraising Armstrong’s later work. Hence his first volume was What A Wonderful World: The Magic Of Louis Armstrong’s Later Years. The second volume, Heart Full Of Rhythm: The Big Band Years Of Louis Armstrong, covers 1929-46. Finally, Riccardi has turned to Armstrong’s early career, up to 1929.
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1 week ago | 
jazzjournal.co.uk | Andy Hamilton
American pianist-composer Russ Lossing has led his own bands in New York since 1986, and worked with such masters as Paul Motian and Tim Berne. In 2023 his band King Vulture released Alternate Side Parking Music, featuring frenetic rhythms and acidulous Wurlitzer and Rhodes electric pianos. His beautiful latest album Inventions reflects a change of scene and mood.
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1 month ago | 
jazzjournal.co.uk | Andy Hamilton
Pianist-composer Jim Doherty’s octet album was recorded in 1986 with close friends Louis Stewart (guitar) and Bobby Shew (trumpet). The band features the finest Los Angeles musicians – Bob Sheppard: alto, Gordon Brisker: tenor, Randy Aldcroft: trombone, Tom Warrington: bass, and Billy Mintz: drums. The pianist is a veteran of the Irish jazz scene, who also worked as a session musician and composer/arranger for TV and theatre.
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Mar 4, 2025 | 
jazzjournal.co.uk | Andy Hamilton
New York City based American pianist and composer Russ Lossing has a singular musical vision that makes him a musician’s musician. That means that he is not a populist, and remains little-known beyond his coterie of admirers. Maybe he’d agree with Jim Hall, that if someone had asked him to sell out, he would have – but I think that like Hall, he’s an ironist. You have to be to make a living in our cultural world, without selling out.
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Feb 13, 2025 | 
jazzjournal.co.uk | Andy Hamilton
In Brassroots Democracy, author Benjamin Barson presents a “music history from below”, embracing the Haitian revolution, post-civil war reconstruction and early jazz. The term “brassroots democracy” is a synthesis of grassroots activism and New Orleans’ historic brass-band tradition, and Barson argues that jazz arose from the mass mobilisation of freed people during reconstruction during the decades before 1900.
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Feb 2, 2025 | 
jazzjournal.co.uk | Andy Hamilton
This haunting album, reissued in ECM’s Luminescence vinyl series, features intense improvising and memorable compositions. As Marilyn Crispell says, “There’s a great depth of communication, a rare delicacy.” It was recorded in 2000, and it’s sad to note that only the pianist is still with us. Drummer Paul Motian died in 2011, and bassist Gary Peacock in 2020. Crispell was inspired by Cecil Taylor, and went on to play with Anthony Braxton for 12 years.
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Dec 2, 2024 | 
jazzjournal.co.uk | Andy Hamilton
This previously unreleased live double album from Copenhagen’s Jazzhus Montmartre features the French master in a magnificent trio with Gary Peacock (bass) and Roy Haynes (drums). The trio existed only for a studio session in 1987 and a short European tour the next year, of which this recording is a document. At the Jazzhus they play six Petrucciani originals, plus standards and jazz standards.
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Nov 29, 2024 | 
jazzjournal.co.uk | Andy Hamilton
Darius Brubeck has “played the changes” both as a musician, and politically, through deep involvement in the cultural politics of South Africa, 1983-2005. With partner Catherine, he moved there in 1983 to lead Africa’s first jazz-studies degree programme, at University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN) in Durban. In 1989, he became director of the new Centre for Jazz and Popular Music. Catherine Brubeck had studied at UKZN before her career in publishing and music management in New York.
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Nov 9, 2024 | 
jazzjournal.co.uk | Andy Hamilton
Pianist Tord Gustavsen was born in Oslo in 1970. He studied music at Oslo and Trondheim universities, then made his highly successful ECM debut with Changing Places in 2003. It was followed by two other trio albums, The Ground (2005) which reached No. 1 in the Norwegian pop charts, and Being There (2007). Seeing is the fourth trio album, and his ninth release on the label. It features longstanding partner Jarle Vespestad on drums, and new bassist Steinar Raknes.
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Oct 28, 2024 | 
jazzjournal.co.uk | Andy Hamilton
As intrepid festival director Antanas Gustys explains in the programme, this is the 37th Vilnius Jazz Festival – and incredibly, he has been in charge since the first. The Alister Spence/Tony Buck duo on the first night is one of the highlights, building on their 2023 debut album Mythographer. Both players have a remarkable stylistic range – this duo is at the free-improv end of their output.
