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Bill Evans: Evans in England - Resonance Records
© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.“... beauty still affects people, … they know they are custodians of it. We still need to believe in the beautiful. ...all of us are more loyal...
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Why is jazz unpopular? The musicians 'suck', says Branford Marsalis
© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.Although I was aware of his tenor and soprano saxophone playing from his days time with his trumpet playing brother Wynton when they were on...
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Jeff Hamilton on the Role of Mel Lewis in the Big Band Arrangements of Bill...
© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.When we listen to a big band, what we hear is a formed tonal entity - the whole equaling the sum of its parts.The composer-arranger gives the...
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Ralph Moore - "This I Dig Of You"
© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.I took a break from Jazz some time in the early 1970’s. I didn’t like where the music was going at the time so I decided to check out for...
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Michel Petrucciani - Pianism
© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.“He… [is] a romantic with a taste for lush voicings, high-drama soloing and bouts of introspection, while steadily refining and nurturing a...
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James Price Johnson and William "Chick" Webb
© -Steven A. Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.From time-to-time, the editorial staff at JazzProfiles likes to give a quick nod to some of those who made the music during its formative...
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Free Flight [From the Archives]
© - Steven A. Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.Through a mutual friend, I was introduced to bassist James Lacefield during the early 1980s.Although some of the early giants and creators...
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Baby Dodds and Zutty Singleton: Paving the Path to Modern Drumming
© - Steven A. Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.“One night late in the fall of 1933, a lanky youth with a mop of dark hair entered a night club on Chicago’s north side and asked the...
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A Review of Harlem Jazz Adventures: A European Baron’s Memoir, 1934-1969...
© - Steven A. Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.It's not often that one gets to read first-hand accounts about the early makers of the music - primary source material about Jazz masters...
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Herbie Hancock – A Jump Ahead
© -Steven A. Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.Before he became a sizzling Jazz-Rock Fusion superstar for Warner Bros. and Columbia Records during the 1970s [and beyond], pianist-composer...
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Johnny Griffin - "Some of My Best Friends" by Orrin Keepnews
© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.In a comparison with Sonny Rollins and John Coltrane - whom the Jazz press dubbed “heavyweight tenor saxophonists” - being described as “the...
View ArticleI Concentrate on You - J . J Johnson & Kai Winding
When trombonists J.J. Johnson and Kai Winding put their quintet together in the mid-1950's, some Jazz critics questioned whether it would work because of the sameness in the sonority of the two...
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Thelonious and Orrin, Monk and Keepnews, That Is
© - Steven A. Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.For a short time in the late 1990’s before he moved to the other side of “The Bay” [San Francisco, of course, is there another one?],...
View ArticleKai Winding and J.J. Johnson – ISRAEL 1968 (LP full album)
Trombonists J.J. Johnson and Kai Winding recordings are the subject of a forthcoming feature on the JazzProfiles blog. This is their last recording together. It was made in 1968 and released on A&M...
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Gerry Mulligan - Before: First of Two Articles by Leonard Feather
© - Steven A. Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.“The way Mulligan wrote made his omission of the piano inevitable: His chords were moving so much that the piano got in the way. Gerry was...
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Gerry Mulligan - After: Second of Two Articles by Leonard Feather
© - Steven A. Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved."Gerry has a missionary's zeal. He equates jazzmen with the left bank writers in Paris in the 1920s. He goes about things so fiercely that...
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Milt Bernhart - by Gordon Jack
© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.Gordon Jack is a frequent contributor to the Jazz Journaland a very generous friend in allowingJazzProfilesto re-publish many of his perceptive...
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