Music and Musical Gear

It is hard to believe (well, for me anyway), but we are fast approaching the 30th anniversary of the assassination of John Lennon, after just recently passing the 70th anniversary of his birth. We are also 40 years since the break-up of the Beatles, so in honor of all of these anniversaries going on I decided to take a walk through the Beatles official release catalog. The entire set was released just over a year ago fully remastered, and it is those versions I will revisit. This means that my brother’s copy of Meet the Beatles will be left unaddressed….

A few weeks ago we learned that jazz keyboard player T Lavitz died unexpectedly in his sleep at the age of 54. Lavitz was best known for his time in the jazz-rock fusion group Dixie Dregs, but also released high-profile solo works, and he also formed groups such as the critically acclaimed Players, as well as Jazz is Dead which was an ensemble of veteran jazz players reinterpreting works of the Grateful Dead. Lavitz was one of the many talented artists to come out of the University of Miami’s ground-breaking jazz education program of the 1970’s (including most of the…

Welcome to another edition of Music Diary Reviews! I am absolutely loving the variety of stuff I’ve been able to sample recently – there is pop, rock, fusion, jazz, and a couple of re-issues that have been thrilling my iPod for the last few weeks. There are young artists releasing new stuff, old artists with new material, an import, an interesting setting for an established player, a reissue of an out of print recording and a new collection by a great master! And about the image at top? It IS Halloween week after all, and the folks at sheetmusicdigital have…

Image courtesy Hans Speekenbrink via AllAboutJazz.com Last night I took my family to see Pat Metheny and his Orchestrion live at the Anderson Performing Arts center in Binghamton, NY. Early this year I noted the introduction to the technology here and reviewed the CD here. When the concert tour was first announced, I was unsurprised that the nearest spots would be about four hours away from me (one thing I really miss about the Boston area!) So when a follow-up set of dates was announced in May that would bring Metheny within an hour … I grabbed tickets right away…

Welcome to another edition of Music Diary Reviews! Wait – what Music Diary Reviews, you ask? I have been doing a series of short CD reviews grouped into full-scale articles, and seem to have no intention in stopping, so it was time to give them a real name! The basic idea is the same – a short capsule review of new release music with some highlights, a track selection and some buyer advice … and a quick video if I can find one. What started as just another set of reviews took on a particular theme this time: there are…

Over the last few months I have done dozens of short CD reviews articles here, here and here. I continue to get great feedback about this ‘Quick Review’ format, so I plan to keep using it as a way to give a brief overview of a number of new releases all at once. Last time I changed things up a bit by looking at a couple of not-so-good releases. Fortunately I have some great stuff to review this time – but am changing things up again! Did you notice the title doesn’t say ‘Quickie Jazz CD Reviews’? That is because…

I can hardly believe it has been nearly a year since I reviewed Vijay Iyer’s Historicity. I marked that recording high on my list of ‘best music of 2009’, so I was hotly anticipating his next release. I wasn’t alone in my praise – at his official site, the description calls it “one of the most acclaimed albums of the decade, Vijay Iyer’s debut on ACT Music is a trio album combining his searing originals with a surprising batch of covers.” As a result, the new release ‘Solo’ has gained plenty of attention already – but is it worth buying?…

In every medium, every genre, there are transitions from one period to the next, silent to ‘talkies’ to color films, baroque to classical to romantic in classical music, and so on. But seldom is there a singular musical even that forms such a clear demarcation in a genre as Miles Davis 1970 Bitches Brew does for Jazz music. As stated on the Miles-Beyond blog, everything in Jazz comes down to ‘before’ or ‘after’ Bitches Brew. It is interesting to look back and realize that in spite of being one of the clear stars of jazz from the 1940’s until his…

Over the last few months I have done short reviews on more than 30 CD’s in two articles here and here. As I mentioned before, the response has been amazing! I continue to get emails and more unsolicited (but always welcome) invites to listen to music. But I also have been called out as an elitist. Because I love jazz and modern classical music and tend to prefer rather esoteric styles in those genres, and because I have always had a fondness for highly skilled artists who polish their technical abilities to better serve their craft, I am often seen…