Category Archives: Reviews

The 10th release by the The Tiptones Saxophone Quartet (plus drums)!!!

CD review by Matt Cole

Artist: The Tiptons Saxophone Quartet
Title: Strange Flower
Cat.#: 884501405928
Label: Zipa! / Spoot Music
Genre: Jazz/Balkan Beat
Listen to and buy the CD

Strange Flower, recorded in June of 2010 and dropped this winter, is the 10th release by the The Tiptones Saxophone Quartet  (plus drums), the 6th since the band reformed in 2002, and the 2nd featuring the band’s current lineup of, Amy Denio  (alto sax, clarinet, voice),  Jessica Lurie  (alto & tenor sax, voice), Sue Orfield  (tenor sax, voice), and Tina Richerson (baritone sax, voice). Chris Stromquist (of Kultur Shock, Slavic Soul Party, and other fame) holds down the drums on this album.

The Tiptons are named for Billy Tipton, a successful big band saxophone player, pianist, and band leader who was born a woman but dressed and then lived as a man, in order to play the music that he loved without being relegated to novelty acts; except for a few family members and friends, most of Tipton’s friends and musical collaborators did not learn of his anatomical gender until after his death.

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YEMEN BLUES (Israel) creating “moments of soul” @ Le Poisson Rouge (NY)

 Date:  March 9, 2011
Venue: Le Poisson Rouge (NY)

Photo by Zohar Ron

Text by Jim Hoey, videos and interview by Sohrab Saadat Ladjevardi

In New York city, musicians come from all over the world to hook up and put a band together in the hopes of touring the world and living that dream. The players in YEMEN BLUES are in the middle of that process, not yet “on top of the world”, but rising up and starting to play venues and cities farther and farther away from New York.

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Tully Scope Festival presenting Tyondai Braxton’s “Selection from Central Market (2008)”

Date: March 7, 2011
Venue: Lincoln Center/Alice Tully Hall

Concert review by Jim Hoey

I clearly remember the day in Williamsburg when I first saw Tyondai Braxton making sounds, sitting surrounded by a circle of pedal effects in the middle of a street festival, sun beaming down, the East River a block or so away, one of a few performers set to play. He just sat blaring into a microphone, tweaking his electronics.

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Multi-talented Philadelphia Jazz Prodigy Ernest Stuart Releases Self-Produced Debut CD “Solitary Walker” today!!!

Artist: Ernest Stuart
Title: Solitary Walker
Label: Ernest Stuart
Genre: Jazz

Reviewed by Angela Davis

Ernest Stuart is a multi-talented trombonist who has established himself as a reputable sideman in both the New York and Philadelphia areas with notable names such as Branford Marsalis, Billy Paul and the great Duke Ellington Orchestra. His debut album Solitary Walker showcases not only his impressive trombone playing that is strongly routed in the tradition, but his formidable composition and arranging skills.

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