Jazz

Eiko Ishibashi evaluation– tantalising reworking of Drive My Cars and truck soundtrack

Published

1 year ago

November 21, 2022

Kings Place, London
The composer and multi-instrumentalist is joined by a single saxophonist, reinterpreting her mesmerising soundscapes as delicate duets

Eiko Ishibashi is a composer and multi-instrumentalist who wears many hats. Over the last decade and a half we’ve heard her recording left-field music with such avant-rock luminaries as Jim O’Rourke and Keiji Haino; making ear-grating prog-punk with Tatsuya Yoshida from Ruins; crooning low-volume ambient ballads on the album Carapace; singing over angular jazz-rock on Car and Freezer; experimenting with musique concrète and electronica on Satellite; and recording Nils Frahm-ish piano solos on I’m Armed. And that’s just a small selection of her output.

Tonight she wears yet another hat: that of the film composer, playing an hour-long suite of songs based on her soundtrack to the multiple-Oscar-nominated, Palme d’Or-winning movie Drive My Car. Each composition is turned into a duet between herself and the alto saxophonist Kei Matsumaru. It’s an interesting twist, given that there aren’t any saxophones on the original soundtrack, but Matsumaru has a soft, sighing, vibratoless delivery that often sounds like a flute, or even a string section, which fits many of these tracks.

FlipsideMediaET eMagazine

Jazz

Bobby Weir and Sun Ra Arkestra to headline A Great Night in Harlem fundraiser for the Jazz Foundation of America

Published

2 months ago

February 21, 2024

The March 28 event will take place at Harlem’s Apollo.

Bobby Weir and Sun Ra Arkestra will headline A Great Night in Harlem fundraiser for the Jazz Foundation of America.

The annual benefit will take place March 28 at The Apollo in Harlem. Its name plays off of A Great Day in Harlem, the classic 1958 Art Kane black-and-white photograph for Esquire that featured more than 50 jazz musicians seated on and surrounding a brownstone stoop.

The event, with Steve Jordan as musical director, will also feature a tribute to drummer Max Roach, who would have turned 100 in January, with Charles Tolliver, Dee Dee Bridgewater, George Cables, Billy Harper and Rufus Reid, as well as the Titans of Jazz Drums with Al Foster, Billy Hart and Louis Hayes.

The evening will honor Richard Parsons with JFA’s Dr. Billy Taylor Humanitarian Award. Parsons is the former chairman of Citigroup and former chairman/CEO of Time Warner.

Parsons is stepping down after 15 years as JFA chairman and will be succeeded by JFA president Jarrett Lilien. Board member Dr. Daveed D. Frazier will become president of the JFA board of directors. Last year’s event honored Clarence Avant, Dave Grusin and Charles Lloyd at Los Angeles’ Vibrato Grill Jazz.

Proceeds from the benefit fund JFA programs that provide housing assistance, pro-bono healthcare, disaster relief and direct financial support to musicians and their families. For the past 35 years, JFA has been assisting not only jazz musicians, but artists in blues, roots and R&B genres.

For more information on tickets for the March 28 event, go to JFA@eventassociatesinc.com For individual concert tickets, go to jazzfoundation.org/gala2024.

FlipsideMediaET Tampa Bay Music News • Live Music “Everything Music”

Jazz

Frank Portolese – ‘Chicago jazz guitar alive and well in Southwest Florida’

Published

6 months ago

November 9, 2023

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Frank Portolese Chicago jazz guitar alive and well in Southwest Florida

Frank Portolese was my first guitar teacher. Until today, I have learned that his musical journey included studying privately with the great Jack Cecchini for five years, and learned the instrument along jazz Improvisation with Joe Daley and voice with Bill Rush. Our gaze in life is often stifled by the cards that we are dealt. ~ David Moore

Jazz

Joshua Redman – jazz saxophonist that speaks the language of love & art

Published

6 months ago

November 9, 2023

FlipsideMediaET

Joshua Redman is without any doubt an acclaimed and charismatic jazz artists that has emerged in the decade of the 1990s. The son of legendary saxophonist Dewey Redman and dancer Renee Shedroff, Joahua was blessed with influences at an early age to a variety of musics (jazz, classical, rock, soul, Indian, Indonesian, Middle-Eastern, African) and instruments (recorder, piano, guitar, gatham, gamelan). His first instrument was the clarinet at age nine. Later, Joshua switched to what became his primary instrument of expression, the tenor saxophone, only one year later. Like many jazz artists, Joshua Redman was influenced by John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, Cannonball Adderley and his father, Dewey Redman, as well as The Beatles, Aretha Franklin, the Temptations, Earth, Wind and Fire, Prince, The Police and Led Zeppelin drew Joshua more deeply into music. But although Joshua loved playing the saxophone and was a dedicated member of the award-winning Berkeley High School Jazz Ensemble and Combo from 1983-86, academics were always his first priority, and he never seriously considered becoming a professional musician.