Tuesday, January 31, 2006

Eric Lohrer Quartet - Live in Pondicherry


Last night Pondicherry in South India was treated to a superb jazz concert by French guitarist Eric Lohrer and his Quartet. The band also featured Jean-Charles Richard on Soprano sax, Eric Surmenian on the bass, and Patrick Goraguer on the drums. It was modern jazz of the highest quality, featuring a variety of compositions from all of the band members, as well as arrangements from other contemporary jazz composers. Apart from individual technical excellence, the musicians played superbly as a group. Communication between the members was very good, and they played with energy and intensity which was never allowed to be over-powering. In all this was a very good performance, and I can recommend going to see them as they continue their tour of India.

Jazz Resources

For a huge variety of great articles on the art of saxophone playing and jazz, check out the Dave Liebman Website:

http://www.upbeat.com/lieb/Feature_Articles/index.htm

Thanks for finding this link goes to: http://www.davidvaldez.blogspot.com/ another very good site with lots of articles and very useful information.

Wednesday, January 25, 2006

Frank Spaniol - Acoustic Jazz


Of the new CD's I have listened to recently I can very much recommend "Acoustic Jazz" by the Frank Spaniol Quartet. I came across this some weeks ago and was very impressed with its fresh approach to modern Jazz. There is however very little information on the Web particularly in English, so I would be interested to find others who have enjoyed listening to this too. For more information try the link below:

http://www.rodenstein-records.com/html/rod11.htm#moreband

Sunday, January 08, 2006

Jazz Interviews


I have discovered recently that there are alot of good interviews with jazz musicans on the web, many of which offer very interesting perspectives into the thoughts and ways of learning of these musicians. Below are a couple of very good ones. The interview with Greg Fishman in particular offers valuable advice on practising the saxophone.


http://www.pbs.org/jazz/about/pdfs/MarsalisB.pdf

http://www.saxontheweb.net/Fishman/1.html