I’m Frank De Blase, and I’m the music writer at City Newspaper. Though I’m thrilled with this year’s Jazz Fest line-up, I’m still holding out for the sleepers, the underdogs, the dark horses. Steve Martin and Trombone Shorty are the odds-on favorites, but you’ll find me digging a little deeper over the next nine days. […]
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JAZZ FEST 2012: Meet Willie Clark (Day 1 preview)
“But if you’re gone during the summer, you’ll miss the Jazz Fest.” Over the past four years that’s what I told many friends and fellow UR students. One of the biggest, and musically best, events in Rochester happens every summer, and as they all left for home or other internships, I always reminded them of […]
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CD Review: Veronneau “Jazz Samba Project”
There is hardly anything as common in jazz as the inclusion of a bossa nova tune on a vocal album, so what makes “Jazz Samba Project” by Veronneau stand out from the crowd? First, there is the sensual voice of Quebec native Lynn Veronneau, which comes close to rivaling that of the great Astrud Gilberto. […]
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Dino Dinicolo
How many things can you do with a five-string bass and a human voice? If you’re Dino Dinicolo the answer is an infinite amount. On the bass he runs the gamut from Jaco Pastorius-like harmonics to Victor Wooten-esque rhythmic slapping. As far as his voice goes, singing is merely the start. His beatboxing seems to […]
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Mambo Kings
Thursday will see the final concert of the season in the Hochstein “Spotlight on Faculty” series, and it promises to be a hot night of Latin jazz. Mambo Kings has been presenting music that is a fusion of Afro-Cuban rhythm and contemporary jazz since 1995. Many of the group’s compositions are original to Richard DeLaney, […]
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PROFILE: Paul Smoker
Paul Smoker can trace his roots back to Berne, Switzerland, where the family name was Schmucker. That means jeweler in German, but there were no jewelers in the family. When the clan immigrated to the United States in the 19th century, the name was changed to Smoker. That means burning jazz artist in English, and […]
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Billy Bang returns
Born William Vincent Walker, he could have earned Billy Bang in Vietnam, or it could have been the result of his violin pyrotec
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Music Reviews 10.12.05
Various Progressions: 100 Years of Jazz Guitar Columbia Legacy If you love jazz guitar, make room for the most comprehensive collection ever assembled. Columbia selected vintage tracks from 33 labels to present 78 guitarists on four discs. Included in the oversize package is a 148-page lavishly illustrated book with an excellent essay by guitar historian […]
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Jazz Italian style
The jam session at the Rochester International Jazz Festival was just heating up one night last June when a man with a tenor saxophone stepped on stage to join the Bob Sneider Trio on “Stella by Starlight.” I was skeptical. He looked more like a businessman than a performer. But when he put the […]
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Ringing true
You might have to go back as far as John Coltrane’s Stellar Regions (1967) to find an album with as vast a concept as Stefon Harris’ TheGrand Unification Theory. Then again, Harris is not what you’d call a one-dimensional musician. Having placed second to vibes legend Bobby Hutcherson (and first in the Rising Star category) […]
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Do you know this man?
Tom Hampson has been an avid birdwatcher since he was a child growing up in Allegheny National Forest. He’s been a jazz lover since his teenage years and a radio host since his college days. But his listeners may still have been surprised the night he did a show of jazz tunes based on birdcalls. […]
