Blog - Jazz Spectrum

JOHNATHAN BLAKE’s PENTAD with Steve Wilson, Joel Ross, David Virelles, and Dezron Douglas SMOKE JAZZ CLUB

August 29, 2023

By Kim KleinmanEven before the seasons of streams, Johnathan Blake made a huge impression on me as Kenny Barron’s magician on drums (and cymbals, as he is quick to add). He sits high behind his kit and keeps the cymbals low and flat so that he can reach them with the same motion as he uses with the drums. He is a force, a graceful dynamo. Read More

This week on Jazz Spectrum – August 26, 2023

August 25, 2023

Jazz Spectrum

By Fritz ByersTwo days ago, I posted a short piece about Wayne Shorter. You’ll find it just below in the blog thread.

Each set of this week’s show, except the two dedicated to the Song of the Week (“Good Morning Heartache”), begins with Wayne and a world-class band performing one of his compositions. Read More

Wayne Shorter

August 23, 2023

Jazz Spectrum

By Fritz Byers

This Friday is the birthday of Wayne Shorter, born August 25, 1933. He passed in March of this year, at 89. For more than fifty years, Wayne was in the pantheon of composers and instrumentalists, and he will live there permanently. If we had only his nine 1960s Blue Note recordings, from Night Dreamer in 1964 through Super Nova in 1969, he would be unrivaled as a composer, bandleader, and improviser. Read More

This week on Jazz Spectrum – August 19, 2023

August 18, 2023

Jazz Spectrum

By Fritz Byers

As you’ll see in the playlist for this week’s show, three of the first four sets begin with big-band pieces. Read More

Celebrating Bill Evans (b. Aug. 16, 1929) and Mal Waldron (b. Aug. 16, 1925)

August 16, 2023

Jazz Spectrum

By Fritz Byers

Today is the birthday of two essential jazz pianists – Bill Evans, a front-line luminary in the music by almost any reckoning; and Mal Waldron, less prominent in the broader culture but widely admired among musicians and by partisans of what is loosely but helpfully called the avant-garde. For years I’ve been meaning to write at length about Bill Evans and what his music has meant to me over the half-century of my attentions Read More

Johnathan Blake Drumset Jazz Spectrum_515

Drummer Johnathan Blake and His Quintet, Pentad

August 11, 2023

Jazz Spectrum

By Fritz Byers

The blog post immediately below, an appreciation of the pianist Larry Willis, expresses some of the reasons Larry is this week’s featured artist. Read More

LARRY WILLIS – An Appreciation

August 9, 2023

Jazz Spectrum

By Fritz ByersIn the early years of the Murphy’s Jazz Masters program, we brought the pianist Larry Willis to play in Toledo. There were day-time educational features, as usual, and the night gig was, of course, at Murphy’s, back when it was still in the original location on Madison. If memory serves, Buster Williams was the bassist. Read More

Bobby Watson and Jon Faddis

August 4, 2023

Jazz Spectrum

By Fritz ByersThe alto saxophonist Bobby Watson’s composition, “The Misery of Ebop,” from his career-defining 1986 masterpiece, Love Remains. In the late 70s, Bobby, who on the LP cover of this album is billed as Robert, studied in the fabled institute of advanced hard-bop studies that was Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers. He began making recordings as a leader toward the end of that decade. Read More

On Tony Bennett

August 1, 2023

Jazz Spectrum

By Kim Kleinman
Jazz Spectrum Contributing Writer

I primarily mourned Tony Bennett’s death by finding his two albums with the revered Bill Evans from right around the time I saw Evans with Eddie Gomez at the Antibes Jazz Festival and later at home in Kansas City. That said, I did not get or even listen to them back in the day. Read More

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