By Devon (Doc) Wendell There is no genre in jazz that has become as disrespected, forgotten, and dismissed as big band jazz. Generations of brainwashed lazy music dabblers often come to this warped and naïve conclusion that the entire history of jazz is made up exclusively by the likes of John Coltrane, Miles Davis, and… Read More Doc Wendell’s Prescription For Big Band Swing: “Count Basie At Newport” (Verve)
By Roger Crane, the Song Scout “Peerless Jazz Singing” Many a New Day is Karrin Allyson’s fourteenth CD, one more in a string of topflight jazz vocal albums. In this era of the singer-songwriter, it is almost obligatory to compose one’s own material. But Allyson seemingly accepts that the gift of composing is a separate… Read More CD Review: Karrin Allyson’s “Many A New Day”
By Roger Crane What is left to say about the lovely and iconic “Over the Rainbow?” Well, some basics. The music is by Harold Arlen and the lyric by E. Y. “Yip” Harburg. As many of you know, it was written for and featured in the 1939 Judy Garland movie The Wizard of Oz. The… Read More Keeping the GAS (Great American Songbook) Flame Burning: “Over the Rainbow”
By Brian Arsenault The first cut, “Big Noise, New York” storms in like a Saturday night in Manhattan and I go, “Great! powerhouse jazz served smoking.” But that’s not the whole of Denise Donatelli’s Find a Heart, not by a long shot. New York brassiness is followed by Paris Rain so soft, soft as… Read More CD Review: Denise Donatelli’s “Find A Heart” (Savant)
by Brian Arsenault As a cool September breeze pushes the mists of summer down the bay, ushering in a new season, Carol Welsman’s Alone Together — to be released Friday, Sept. 18 — freshens some old songs you know and some you may not have ever heard. And how good is that? Good enough that… Read More CD Review: Carol Welsman’s “Alone Together”
By Brian Arsenault The last time I reviewed an album by this guy in early 2014, I complimented his reclaiming stellar jazz singing for the guys in the face of so many fine current female jazz singers. This time, with Endless Roads, Eric Van Aro has reestablished the stripped down rock/pop sound amidst an avalanche… Read More CD Review: Eric Van Aro’s “Endless Roads”
By Roger Crane Fellow Music Fans…. I’m an adagio-kind of guy. I love ballads – jazz ballads, country ballads, Latin ballads, any ballads. In particular I seek the great recordings, meaning the 3-way combination of… 1 – Fine Song 2 – Fine Singer 3 – Fine Arrangement/Accompaniment For example, you can find many such… Read More Roger Crane the Song Scout: Great Ballads
by Brian Arsenault Soul Music Secular and Sacred or Sacred and Sublime Halie Loren: Butterfly Blue (Justin Time Records) Halie Loren glides in flight on her new album Butterfly Blue from newly composed musical poetry to the songbook of American music on the wings of a deepening and darkening musical sense, an extraordinary accompanying group… Read More Record Rack: Halie Loren and The Monks of Norcia
“A perfectly wonderful jazz vocal album” By Roger Crane, the Song Scout A classically trained mezzo-soprano who swings? Yes – and her name is Lena Seikaly. Although only 25, she is an established composer who has written many classical and jazz arrangements for small ensembles, choirs and full orchestra. She is also an educator, a… Read More CD Review: Lena Seikaly’s “Looking Back”
By Brian Arsenault I started getting happy listening to Van Morrison’s Duets:Re-Working the Catalog” (RCA) about the time George Benson was singing as smooth as he always is on “Higher Than The World” and I was downright grinning through Van and Georgie Fame’s “Get On With The Show.” Pure 50s jukebox. Drifters, Coasters, gratuitous but… Read More CD Review: Van Morrison’s “Duets: Re-Working the Catalogue”
The International Review of Music 