John Murph
John’s Contributions
May 2005 Hearsay
Lea DeLaria
It's really hard to be a 'hyphenate' of any kind because people tend to not take you seriously," says Lea DeLaria, minutes after performing the role of Winnie in the Classic Stage Company's production of Samuel Beckett's Happy Days. The 48-year-old is referring...
April 2005 Albums
Closer
David Sanborn
Of all the contemporary jazz artists, saxophonist David Sanborn is fascinating because he knows way more than he plays. It's easy to detect Hank Crawford in Sanborn's pinched, super-hot tone and riff-oriented improvisations, but many times his song choices...
March 2005 Hearsay
Luis Perdomo
Luis Perdomo didn't want to make a Latin jazz record when he first arrived in New York City, 13 years ago. Even though the pianist-composer is firmly rooted in the idiom, having grown up in Caracas, Venezuela, he says that he "just wasn't into it," when...
01/24/05 Concerts
Panama Jazz Festival 2010
The reawakening of a country’s soul is a splendid thing to witness, especially when it’s a place as beautiful and intriguing as Panama. Ever since the fall of fomer dictator Manuel Noriega in 1989 and then, in 1999, gaining full control of the Panama Canal...
January/February 2005 Hearsay
Abram Wilson
Making the connection between Louis Armstrong's Hot Five and hip-hop/R&B seems like a better exercised idea on paper than on the bandstand. But trumpeter and singer Abram Wilson's splendid debut, Jazz Warrior (Dune), offers a persuasive case for the unlikely...
December 2004 News
Roy Hargrove: Strength in Fewer Numbers
When Roy Hargrove reinvented himself into a soul man, fans of the trumpeter's more traditional works probably hoped that his RH Factor project would be a short-term diversion. After all, the last thing mainstream instrumental jazz needs is another bright...
December 2004 Books
Uptown Conversation: The New Jazz Studies
Edited by Robert G. O'Meally, Brent Hayes Edwards and Farah Jasmine Griffin
Conversations about jazz usually resemble sports fanatics keeping tabs on athletes, statistics and historic moments. Rarely do conventional jazz heads discuss the music as a multifaceted culture that touches other disciplines and how it impacts contemporary...
December 2004 Albums
It Is What It Is
Melvin Sparks
Another Melvin Sparks album, another jazz-funk date. As the title of his new album suggests, guitarist Sparks makes no apology for the stylistic redundancy of his recordings. And at least you can, in most cases, count on the funk being potent and infectious...
November 2004 Albums
Gwotet
David Murray and the Gwo-Ka Masters featuring Pharoah Sanders
On the tantalizing Gwotet, saxophonist David Murray reprises his investigation of the Creole music of Guadeloupe (first explored in 1998 on Creole and four years later with Yonn-De), reuniting with the Gwo-Ka Masters: vocalist-percussionists Klod Kiavue...
November 2004 Albums
Devotion
Courtney Pine
After fashioning his own West Indian-influenced brand of neobop in the '80s, saxophonist Courtney Pine reached a creative high in 1995 with Modern Day Jazz Stories (Verve), on which he fused burning, Trane-esque exploits with soul-jazz and hip-hop, resulting...
November 2004 News
Bobby Watson & Victor Lewis: On the Horizon
They were known as "the happy band." Throughout the late '80s and early '90s Bobby Watson and Victor Lewis' Horizon concocted a soul-stirring brand of hard bop where joy radiated off the bandstand. While it took a while for the band to gel-bassists Curtis...
October 2004 Grooves
The New Mixes, Volume 1
Quincy Jones/Bill Cosby
The New Mixes Vol. I is an intriguing remix project based on the newly reissued album Quincy Jones & Bill Cosby: The Original Jam Sessions 1969 (both on Concord). The remixes sort of pick up where the Dream Warriors left off in 1990 with their daffy hip...
October 2004 Grooves
Intuit
Intuit
Leave it up to the Munich's Compost label (Jazzanova, Truby Trio) to come up with the summer's tightest soundtrack of jazz-laden electronica. The eponymous debut by Intuit is Compost's jazz-savviest disc yet. Make no mistake, the production team of drummer...
October 2004 Grooves
Aquarius Songs
Joseph Malik
Joseph Malik's second disc for Compost, Aquarius Songs, is edgy psychedelic soul that touches on personal and socio-political angst. The Nigerian-Scottish singer again collaborates with multi-instrumentalist and producer David Donnelly, who insulates Malik...
October 2004 Grooves
Re:Jazz Re:Mix
Various Artists
The compilation [re:jazz] (re:mix) (Kriztal) is the result of a cat-and-mouse game initiated by the Ifracom label. Last year, Infracom curated material from its 10-year-deep catalog for [re:jazz], which converted electronica tunes into organic jazz. On...
October 2004 Grooves
The Porter Project
Various Artists
There are no structural deficiencies in the source material for The Porter Project (Kriztal), on which guitarist, vocalist and producer Billy Paul Williams recontexualizes a batch of Cole Porter tunes into chilled-out ear candy. Williams' ragamuffin take...
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ReportAbout John Murph
John Murph is a Washington, D.C.-based music, art and pop culture journalist. His work has been published in JazzTimes, Down Beat, JazzWise and Vibe magazines; in the Washington Post, the Washington Post Express and the Washington City Paper newspapers; and on the NPR, BET Interactive and the Root Web sites. He also hosts a bi-weekly radio show on WPFW-FM (89.3).