Wes Montgomery’s first of three albums for A&M, A Day in the Life from 1967,…
Search Results for: Wes Montgomery
The Week in Jazz is your roundup of new and noteworthy stories from the jazz…
“Wives and Lovers” is a hit song by the acclaimed songwriting duo of Burt Bacharach…
After a string of successful studio albums on Riverside, label chief/producer Orrin Keepnews was champing at the…
Norman Brown is a Grammy award-winning contemporary jazz guitarist who has sold over 2 million…
Jazz legend Wes Montgomery recorded the tune “June in January” for the album The Montgomery Brothers in…
This version of “Four on Six,” from his album Smokin’ at the Half Note with the Wynton Kelly Trio, has all the trappings of a Montgomery classic: an unforgettable melody, a steamrolling hard-bop groove, and plenty of head-spinning guitar acrobatics.
Jazz legend Wes Montgomery recorded the tune “June in January” for the album The Montgomery Brothers in…
Resonance Records released guitarist Wes Montgomery’s In Paris: The Definitive ORTF Recording, on January 26.…
Wes Montgomery In the Beginning (Resonance) Featured on Spring 2016 JAZZIZ On Disc (Disc Two) Indianapolis native…
PRELUDE
Guitarist Rez Abbasi considers the compositions of Django Reinhardt; Ran Blake and Christine Correa record their sixth album together; Ike Sturm and Jesse Lewis venture beyond studio walls; and requisite Wes Montgomery.
FEATURES
- Michael Jarrett’s Pressed for All Time peeks into the studio during some of jazz’s most important recording sessions.
- What makes an album cover immortal? Five contemporary illustrators weigh in.
- Don Was discusses his journey from the studios of Detroit to the top of pop charts to the helm of Blue Note Records.
- Jazz artists have used concept albums to pay tribute, spin stories and raise hell.
REVIEWS
- Reviews of albums by Ambrose Akinmusire, Arturo O’Farrill and the Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra, Lauren Henderson, Bill Frisell, Irreversible Entanglements, The Jerry Granelli Trio, Rudresh Mahanthappa, Archie Shepp, John Scofield and Micah Thomas.
Disc One: Guitar Picks Kurt Rosenwinkel continues to surprise. During the past year, the distinctive…
I’m writing this just a few weeks before a celebration of the life and legacy…
Jeff Parker explores a variety of sonic possibilities, following only the compass of rigorous individualism.…
Julian Lage discusses the influences of Bill Frisell, John Zorn, spirituality and the vintage instruments…
Less than a month after The Beatles released Abbey Road, George Benson entered the Rudy…
From a shy teen with a desire to make music to an acclaimed, globe-traveling jazz…
If you’re looking for some great new music to discover this weekend, look no further…
The editors of JAZZIZ have the good fortune of being able to listen to new…
Margaret Slovak battled back from debilitating injuries and continues to craft warm-toned, deeply personal guitar…
Photo credit: Nick Carter[/caption]
Guitarist Oz Noy, a scintillating electric funk-fusion player whose stomp box skills are second to none, plays it fairly clean on his first unadulterated jazz album, Riverside (Outside In Music). Accompanied by upright bass great Ugonna Okegwo and drummer Ray Marchica, Noy plays a Gretsch Duo Jet with a Bigsby tremolo arm on warm-toned straight-ahead renditions of jazz classics like Charlie Parker’s “Billie’s Bounce,” “Donna Lee” and “Anthropology,” and standards like “All the Things You Are” and “Have You Met Miss Jones?” The longtime New York City resident and native of Israel exhibits uncanny facility on the chops-busting Bird numbers (particularly his blazing “Donna Lee”) and shows reverence for tradition in his tasty, straightforward interpretations of the same Broadway show tunes that jazz greats have been covering for decades. His shuffling original “Riverside Blues” convincingly crosses over into Wes Montgomery and Grant Green territory — with maybe a touch of Johnny Guitar Watson in there, as well — while his chord melody work and single-note playing on Bobby Hebb’s “Sunny” is Oz’s personal tribute to the late, great Pat Martino. Highly recommended.
For those who like swing, veteran guitarist Bobby Broom does it in his inimitable old-school fashion on Keyed Up (Steele). Joined by a Chicago crew of pianist-organist Justin Dillard, bassist Dennis Carroll and drummer Kobie Watkins, Broom sweeps up on a burning rendition of Bud Powell’s “Hallucinations (a.k.a. Budo),” a reimagining of Chick Corea’s “Humpty Dumpty” with a subtle hip-hop groove underneath, a luxurious “Misty,” a funky, uptempo remake of Herbie Hancock’s “Driftin’” from his 1962 Blue Note debut, a buoyantly swinging rendition of McCoy Tyner’s “Blues on the Corner” and the bracing original “Quicksilver,” named for the Chicago nightclub where he regularly performs with his Big Deal Trio. Chops plus soul served up with just the right seasoning. 
Following his monumental undertaking of 2018, a six-album set of The Complete Compositions of Thelonious Monk for solo guitar, ever-adventurous six-stringer Miles Okazaki joins forces with members of his Trickster quartet — keyboardist Matt Mitchell, a frequent collaborator of alto saxophonist-composer Tim Berne; and the Steve Coleman & Five Elements longtime rhythm tandem of electric bassist Anthony Tidd and drummer Sean Rickman — on Thisness (Pi). The results are as provocative as they are entrancing. A sequel to 2019’s The Sky Below, this thoughtful four-part suite is wildly kinetic, full of labyrinth-like intricacy and firmly in that Coleman place that is the nexus of odd angularity and funk. From the dreamy and evocative opener, “In Some Far Off Place,” to the surging avant-funk of “Years in Space,” the brisk polyrhythmic romp “I’ll Build a World” and the slowly percolating “And Wait for You,” the leader alternates between Pat Martino precision and James Blood Ulmer abstraction on the fretboard. The group’s extraordinary synergy is evident in rapid-fire call-and-response throughout. The thinking person’s groove music. - Bill Milkowski Featured photo: Brenda Ladd.