Monthly Archives: April 2017
Rescued From The Vaults: Yellowjackets’ Greenhouse
It’s always a treat when an established ‘jazz’ band makes its artistic and/or commercial breakthrough after years of service. Weather Report of course did it with Heavy Weather, and Yellowjackets did something similar with their 1991 release Greenhouse. Greenhouse was their eighth studio album. After several lineup changes – though always sticking to core unit […]
Book Review: Pressed For All Time by Michael Jarrett
It’s a conundrum: how to preserve for all time something as quintessentially ephemeral and improvisatory as a jazz performance. So-called ‘red-light fever’ – the terror of preserving a take for eternity when the ‘record’ button goes on – has haunted the careers of a fair few jazz masters. And yet the music is littered with […]
Sonny Rollins: Saxophone Colossus
Every serious jazz fan seems to have a favourite Sonny Rollins story. One concerns a late-night Carnegie Hall New Year’s Eve concert sometime in the 1990s. Rollins embarked on a typically Herculean solo at around 11:30pm. This went on for quite a while. At EXACTLY ten seconds to midnight he quoted from ‘Auld Lang Syne’. […]
Sounds Of Surprise 