Hearsay
March 2005 By John Murph
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...
January/February 2005 By Bill Milkowski
David Weiss
For the past 18 years, trumpeter-arranger David Weiss has been flying under the radar, quietly going about the daily struggle of being a working jazz musician in New York City while performing at a consistently high level on the bandstand and amassing a...
January/February 2005 By Andrew Lindemann Malone
Jamie Baum
Even before the release of the Jamie Baum Septet's new album, Moving Forward, Standing Still (OmniTone), the disc had already received one important accolade: it garnered a Chamber Music America/Doris Duke Charitable Foundation grant for the flutist that...
January/February 2005 By Andrew Gilbert
Maria Marquez
Maria Marquez is expanding the parameters of Latin jazz. With her luminous, cellolike timbre and supple rhythmic phrasing, the vocalist has painstakingly built her repertoire out of classic Latin American ballads, Brazilian standards and a vast treasure...
January/February 2005 By Bill Milkowski
Richard Leo Johnson
Richard Leo Johnson's approach to the guitar is so intuitive and idiosyncratic that he has often had trouble finding the right "fit" with other musicians. Because he has created a wholly new language on his instrument based on all manner of oddball tunings...
January/February 2005 By John Murph
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 By Rob Young
Paal Nilssen-Love
A jazz dive in a small harbor town on the Southwest coast of Norway might seem the least likely venue for the polyrhythmic percussion tendencies of Art Blakey, Ronald Shannon Jackson, Tony Oxley, et al. to be handed on to the next generation. But that's...
December 2004 By Christopher Loudon
Gabriela Anders
Growing up in one of Buenos Aries' most musical households, under the tutelage of her celebrated saxophonist father, Jorge, vocalist/guitarist Gabriela Anders figures she was the only kid in school who knew who Miles Davis was. "All my friends would be listening...
December 2004 By Martin Johnson
Rebecca Martin
I can't really peg a story for most of my songs," says vocalist/guitarist Rebecca Martin about her new recording, People Behave Like Ballads (MaxJazz). "They're really more about a sentiment or a feeling," Martin's recording is an collection of urbane and...
December 2004 By Martin Johnson
Claudia Villela
In the opening seconds of Dreamtales (Adventure), the new recording by vocalist Claudia Villela and pianist Kenny Werner, she's heard saying, "Let's go for it." The two had no set songs and no previously agreed-upon structure or strategy; they just started...
