The first piano player who observed prodigious talent in Bobby Floyd was his mother. At the age of 2, he walked over to the old upright in the family’s Marion, Ohio, home and began picking out melodies. A short time later his parents discovered he had perfect pitch, and by 5, Floyd was taking piano […]
Music Profile
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Aaron DeRuyter fishes for country twang
For a while there, Rochester musician Aaron DeRuyter figured the best way to describe his music was by calling it country. The thing is he didn’t really like country … or did he? “Eventually it occurred to me that I did actually like country,” DeRuyter says. “And I was playing alt-country before I knew it […]
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Midnight turns darkness into passionate soul
The beauty of the electro-soul music project is how it captures the full range of emotions that creep out of the late-night hours: romantic vulnerability, unease, danger, anger, even sadness.
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Chris Beard bends the blues
Chris Beard — a k a The Prince of the Blues — was shopping around for labels to release what would be the fifth album for the blues rocker. But execs didn’t get it, didn’t want it, or were simply uninterested. Beard was running into walls and out of options. He was frustrated. This was […]
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A transgender musician uses her art to help reinvent herself
At any given time, Cora Treoir Duncan has no less than 100 CDs cluttering her car. She’s a voracious music fan devouring anything from The Byrds and The Bee Gees to Neko Case. She is a longtime musician as well. And whenever the discussion revolves around music — found in piles in the backseat or […]
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“Labor” of love
Singer-songwriter Christopher Paul Stelling is on the road to the Newport Folk Festival in a recently purchased, unassuming white touring van he has affectionately named Walt Whitman. As he recounts the various jobs he held throughout his 20’s — grocery store worker, luthier’s assistant, bookstore employee, sushi chef, dishwasher — a male blowup sex doll […]
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Sharon Jones
Sharon Jones was scheduled to sing at the 2013 Rochester International Jazz Festival when her career was abruptly put on hold due to a bout with cancer. Consequently, the following feature article was also put on hold. After treatment, Jones is back fronting the Dap Kings and is now scheduled to play at this year’s festival, so we wanted […]
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Ingrid Jensen
If instruments have personalities, trumpet has to be the most audacious and in your face. Maybe that’s why not many budding female musicians are handed one. But that’s not the way it was in Ingrid Jensen’s family. Her mom played piano and loved traditional jazz, so growing up in the late-1970’s, Jensen was given a […]
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Raul Midon
When I reached Raul Midon by phone he had just returned from a tour of Europe. With a vocalist, lead guitarist, rhythm guitarist, bassist, percussionist, and trumpet player in tow, it could have been a complicated tour. Luckily, all of those musician are the one-man band that is Raul Midon. Midon plays bass, chords, and […]
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Herb Alpert
It’s 9 a.m., Pacific Time when Herb Alpert gave us a jingle-jangle a few weeks ago. He’d been up for hours recording “Whatever pops into my head,” the 80-year-old jazz and pop trumpeter says. “The night before, I woke up and I’m hearing ‘Blue Skies,’ the song Irving Berlin wrote, and all of a sudden […]
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Jane Bunnett
What is it about Afro-Cuban music that makes it the very embodiment of joy? Is it the dance of the exuberant polyrhythms as they weave in and out of one another? Is it the lilting melodies that remain non-perforated and unadulterated by the dominant beats? Just ask Canadian saxophonist and flautist Jane Bunnett, whose love-at-first-sight […]
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Fred Hersch
Growing up in Cincinnati, Fred Hersch noticed that there was a piano in his house, so, at the age of 4, he sat down and started to pick out tunes. That precocious beginning led Hersch to a career as a sideman with greats like Joe Henderson, Stan Getz, and Art Farmer; as a leader on […]
