Chicago-based bassist Marlene Rosenberg handily juggles roles on her album Pieces of…. Now supportive, now stepping forward and intuitively understanding the time and place for each stance, Rosenberg amply shows why she’s one of the respected young players. It shouldn’t have to be mentioned, but she’s also a rarity in the bass orbit-being a she. Rosenberg has a good band to play off of on the session, including pianist Cedar Walton, tenor saxophonist Javon Jackson and drummer George Fludas. The song list leans toward her own inventive tunes, including the quirky swing of the title track, the sultry linear maze of “Round of Deluge” and the, well, bluesy “WWW.blues.” The set also includes Walton compositions “Sixth Ave.” and “Holy Land,” a fine showcase for Rosenberg’s melodic gifts. All in all, the album has an organic basscentric nature-not in the sense of Rosenberg seizing control of the date, but of a musical logic that works from the low end upward.
Originally PublishedRelated Posts
Sonny Terry/Brownie McGhee: Backwater Blues
Start Your Free Trial to Continue Reading
Become a JazzTimes member to explore our complete archive of interviews, profiles, columns, and reviews written by music’s best journalists and critics.
Jonathan Butler: The Simple Life
Jonathan Butler’s optimistic music belies a dirt-poor childhood growing up in a South Africa segregated by apartheid. Live in South Africa, a new CD and DVD package, presents a sense of the resulting inner turmoil, mixed with dogged resolve, that paved the way to his status as an icon in his country and successful musician outside of it. Looking back, the 46-year-old Butler says today, the driving forces that led to his overcoming apartheid-the formal policy of racial separation and economic discrimination finally dismantled in 1993-were family, faith and abundant talent.
“When we were kids, our parents never talked about the ANC [African National Congress] or Nelson Mandela,” he says. Butler was raised as the youngest child in a large family. They lived in a house patched together by corrugated tin and cardboard, in the “coloreds only” township of Athlone near Cape Town. “They never talked about struggles so we never knew what was happening.”
Start Your Free Trial to Continue Reading
Become a JazzTimes member to explore our complete archive of interviews, profiles, columns, and reviews written by music’s best journalists and critics.
Harry Connick, Jr.: Direct Hits
Two decades after his commercial breakthrough, Harry Connick Jr. taps legendary producer Clive Davis for an album of crooner roots and beloved tunes
Scott LaFaro
Previously unavailable recordings and a new bio illuminate the legend of bassist Scott LaFaro