Showing posts with label Craig Bailey. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Craig Bailey. Show all posts

Thursday, March 15, 2018

Rufus Reid & Akira Tana - Looking Forward

Styles: Jazz, Post Bop
Year: 1995
File: MP3@320K/s
Time: 58:11
Size: 133,5 MB
Art: Front

(5:21)  1. Billy
(6:41)  2. Gold Minor
(5:32)  3. The Duke
(8:33)  4. Skyline
(7:03)  5. Falling in Love
(5:32)  6. Bell
(2:51)  7. The Third Eye
(5:32)  8. Reminiscing
(5:48)  9. Love Dreams
(5:14) 10. Looking Forward

A prolific bassist who's seemingly always in the recording studio, Rufus Reid's name appears on countless hard bop, bebop, swing, and even some pop sessions. His restrained yet emphatic and pungent tone, time, harmonic sensibility, and discernible, if understated, swing are welcome on any session. Trumpet was Reid's first love, but he switched to bass while in the Air Force. He played with Buddy Montgomery in Sacramento, CA, then studied music in Seattle and Chicago in the late '60s and early '70s. Reid worked in Chicago with Sonny Stitt, James Moody, Milt Jackson, Curtis Fuller, and Dizzy Gillespie, and recorded with Kenny Dorham, Dexter Gordon, Lee Konitz, and Howard McGhee in 1970. He toured internationally several times with the Bobby Hutcherson-Harold Land quintet, Freddie Hubbard, Nancy Wilson, Eddie Harris, and Gordon through the '70s. Reid moved to New York in 1976, playing and recording with a quartet co-led by Thad Jones and Mel Lewis, and taught at William Patterson College in Wayne, NJ, starting in 1979. He recorded with Konitz, Ricky Ford, Jack DeJohnette's Special Edition with Kenny Burrell, with a quintet co-led by Frank Wess and Art Farmer, and in duos with Kenny Burrell and Harold Danko in the '80s. Reid also did sessions with Art Farmer and Jimmy Heath. He has co-led a group with drummer Akira Tana since the late '80s that is called TanaReid. As a leader, Rufus Reid has cut sets for Theresa, Sunnyside, and Concord. ~ Ron Wynn https://www.allmusic.com/artist/rufus-reid-mn0000358813/biography

Born 14 March 1952, San Jose, California, USA. A self-taught drummer, Tana played semi-professionally while still at college. He attended Harvard University where he gained a degree in East Asian Studies/Sociology. He then studied at the New England Conservatory of Music, also taking private tuition from percussionists with the Boston Symphony and Boston Pops Orchestras and from jazz drummer Alan Dawson. During his studies he had the opportunity of working with Helen Humes, Milt Jackson, Sonny Rollins, George Russell, Sonny Stitt and other leading jazz musicians. He also played with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and several of the classical music ensembles at the New England Conservatory. In the early 80s he continued to accompany major artists such as Al Cohn, Art Farmer, Benny Golson, Jim Hall, Jimmy Rowles, Zoot Sims and Cedar Walton. He also performed with artists outside the jazz world, including Charles Aznavour and Lena Horne. Tana recorded extensively during these years and in addition to albums with some of the foregoing also appeared with Ran Blake, Chris Connor, Carl Fontana, Jimmy Heath, Tete Montoliu, Spike Robinson, Warne Marsh and many others.

In the early 90s Tana worked with James Moody, Dizzy Gillespie, Frank Wess, Ray Bryant and J.J. Johnson. With Rufus Reid he formed the band TanaReid and, with Reid and pianist Kei Akagi, the Asian American Jazz Trio. A technically accomplished drummer, Tana’s wide range is hinted at by the musicians with whom he has worked. Comfortably at home accompanying singers and instrumental ballads, Tana is equally in his element playing hard bop. 

In the bands he co-leads with Reid he generates an excitingly propulsive rhythmic drive. In addition to playing, Tana has also produced and co-produced several albums including those by TanaReid, the Asian American Jazz trio and Project G-7. He regularly conducts workshops and clinics at colleges and universities, including Berklee College Of Music, and is an adjunct professor at two colleges. https://www.allmusic.com/artist/akira-tana-mn0000610187/biography             

Personnel:  Rufus Reid - Bass;  Akira Tana - Drums;  Mark Turner - Tenor Saxophone;  John Stetch - Piano;  Tom Harrell - Trumpet;  Craig Bailey - Alto Saxophone.

Looking Forward

Sunday, September 6, 2015

Tom Harrell - Time's Mirror

Styles: Trumpet Jazz
Year: 1999
File: MP3@320K/s
Time: 50:34
Size: 116,0 MB
Art: Front

(8:19)  1. Shapes
(3:31)  2. Autumn Leaves
(4:01)  3. Daily News
(2:47)  4. Dream
(5:06)  5. Chasin' The Bird
(8:43)  6. São Paulo
(8:09)  7. Time's Mirror
(9:54)  8. Train Shuffle

Tom Harrell has received rave reviews from his fellow jazz musicians for years, but he only started receiving the attention he deserved from a wider audience in the latter half of the 1990s. A number of Harrell's compositions and arrangements on this outstanding big band session date from the 1960s but are just now being recorded; it is more than worth the wait. The background harmonies behind the soloists on the hard-driving "Shapes" are incredible; the tense "Daily News" with his rich flugelhorn, the haunting ballad "Times Mirror," and the foot tapping blues "Train Shuffle" are all candidates to become jazz standards. His treatments of "Autumn Leaves," "Dream" and "Chasin' The Bird" display vivid imagination. 

Harrell's playing on trumpet and flugelhorn is sparkling, and tenor saxophonists Alex Foster and Don Braden as well as pianist Xavier Davis also shine. Highly recommended! ~ Ken Dryden  http://www.allmusic.com/album/times-mirror-mw0000668736

Personnel: Tom Harrell (trumpet, flugelhorn); Craig Bailey (alto saxophone, flute); Mark Gross (alto saxophone, clarinet); Alex Foster (tenor saxophone, flute); Don Braden (tenor saxophone); David Schumacher (baritone saxophone); Joe Magnarelli, Chris Rogers, David Weiss, James Zollar (trumpet, flugelhorn); Earl Gardner (trumpet); Conrad Herwig, Mike Fahn, Curtis Hasselbring (trombone); Douglas Purviance (bass trombone); Xavier Davis (piano); Kenny Davis (bass); Carl Allen (drums).

Time's Mirror

Tuesday, March 4, 2014

Craig Bailey, Tim Armacost & Brooklyn Big Band - Live at Sweet Rhythm

Styles: Jazz
Year: 2009
File: MP3@320K/s
Time: 68:06
Size: 156,7 MB
Art: Front

( 9:10)  1. Long Haired Girl
( 9:59)  2. Brazilian Bop
(14:44)  3. Take the Coltrane
( 4:52)  4. East of Enid
( 8:27)  5. Animated
( 7:52)  6. Quiet Time
(10:14)  7. My Blues
( 2:46)  8. Announcement Funk

The 17-piece Brooklyn Big Band, formed in 2000, is heavy on saxophone players, starting with its leaders, Craig Bailey (alto and flute) and Tim Armacost (tenor and clarinet). As displayed on this debut recording, Bailey and Armacost’s conception is to explore contemporary possibilities for the big band, in part by reviewing the past. The unsigned liner notes say of the disc’s longest track, “Take the Coltrane,” “This performance encapsulates a lot of what the group is trying to achieve,” which might be summarized as trying to answer the musical question, “What would Duke Ellington and His Orchestra have sounded like if John Coltrane had been their saxophonist in the 1960s?” “Take the Coltrane” is generously credited to Ellington as composer (notwithstanding that “Take the ‘A’ Train” was written by Billy Strayhorn), and while there isn’t much Ellington in it, it does attempt to reinterpret mature Coltrane in a big-band context. 

But that’s really only one track in a quite varied set. Trombonist Jason Jackson’s “Brazilian Bop” brings in the inevitable Latin tinge prior to “Take the Coltrane,” in what is basically a history lesson that makes up the first section of the disc, following the bravura opener, “Long Haired Girl.” Bailey’s palate-cleansing “East of Enid” inaugurates a mellow midsection for the album, giving David Berkman a chance to make like a New Age pianist before he joins in with a delicate flute line. Armacost’s big moment is his unaccompanied solo late in the melodic “Animated,” after which Bailey makes the argument that his old boss Ray Charles represented a valid strain of big-band jazz in “Quiet Time” and “My Blues.” Whether or not that’s true, the Brooklyn Big Band fully delivers on its claim to be an evolution of the big-band sound here. ~ William Ruhlmann   http://jazztimes.com/articles/25812-live-at-sweet-rhythm-craig-bailey-tim-armacost-brooklyn-big-band