Jazz Music Site

The exceptionally talented super group Pieces of a Dream, celebrating 30 years of funky jazz have released their latest CD entitled Pillow Talk.

This is the latest in a long list of contemporary jazz releases by this group and I have been very impressed with the sound quality of the tracks on this CD.

Although this is essentially an instrumental CD vocal contributors on the project include Ramona Dunlap, Cherie Mitchell and Scott Mann among others.

The vocals seem to be just right to accompany the music. Very rich and soulful, and delivered with confidence yet still mellow too. All at the same time. True, the occasional vocals enhance the music, but on this CD the music is what really makes the project special.

The group is led by acclaimed keyboardist James Lloyd, and drummer Curtis Harmon into a stirring opening track entitled House Arrest. A very groovable tune that will at the very least have you tapping your toes.

From there the listener is treated to a buffet of simply fantastic music making Pillow Talk one of those CD’s that’s good any time you just need to put on some music and pour yourself a glass of your favorite wine and mellow out a bit.

One that goes great with a fireplace, your favorite bottle of wine and your significant other.

Overall I think Pillow Talk is an outstanding release. What I call, must have music. I give it two thumbs up. Even the casual smooth jazz fan will appreciate and enjoy Pieces of a Dream’s very nice mix of smooth and funky style.

A real pleasure to listen to as none of the tracks on it leave you disappointed.

The standout tunes and SmoothJazz247.com favorites on Pillow Talk are Foward Emotion [track 2], Wake Up Call [track 6], and In That Mood [track 9]. My SmoothLee Bonus Pick, and the one that got Sore […as in “Stuck On REpeat”] is track 8, Those 3 Words. Very nice!

Release Notes:

Pieces of a Dream originally released Pillow Talk on March 28, 2006 on the Heads Up record label.

CD track list follows:

1. House Arrest

2. Foward Emotion

3. Triflin’

4. Sincere

5. Sailing

6. Wake Up Call

7. Teresa

8. Those 3 Words

9. In That Mood

10. Attitude

11. Your Love

12. Pillow Talk

Alan Broadbent, the richly talented Jazz artist has released his latest CD titled You And The Night And The Music and Wow! It’s good.

Unfortunately, it’s not everyday that I get a CD from an artist that I can just pop in and comfortably listen to from beginning to end. There is usually a song or two that I just can’t force myself to get through. Not at all the case with You And The Night And The Music. Every track is enjoyable and was pretty easy for me to listen to from start to finish.

One of the refreshingly nice things about this CD is the way all of the participating artists seem to be really enjoying themselves. Combine that with the overall presentation and you’ve got one of Alan Broadbent’s most impressive releases ever. Overall You And The Night And The Music is outstanding from beginning to end. One of those CDs that after a few listens the songs are just etched into your memory. A must have for the Jazz fan. Really spectacular from beginning to end.

While this entire album is outstanding the truly standout tracks are You And The Night And The Music [track 1], Withe The Wind And The Rain In Her Hair [track 3], and What’s New [track 6]. My SmoothLee Bonus Pick, and the one that got Sore […as in “Stuck On REpeat”] is track 2, I Wish I Knew. Outstanding!

You And The Night And The Music Release Notes:

Alan Broadbent originally released You And The Night And The Music on Oct 24, 2006 on the Artistry label.

CD Track List Follows:

1. You And The Night And The Music

2. I Wish I Knew

3. With The Wind And The Rain In Her Hair

4. Baubles, Bangles, And Beads

5. Ceora

6. What’s New

7. Dearly Beloved

Personnel: Alan Broadbent (piano); Brian Bromberg (bass); Joe LaBarbera (drums). Recorded at Castle Oaks Studios, Los Angeles, California on March 15 & 16, 2002.

The exceptionally talented smooth jazz sax man Gerald Albright has released his own greatest hits CD entitled The Very best of Gerald Albright.

I am very confident and happy to announce that I believe Albright fans, and smooth jazz fans alike will be pleased with this one. With the release of this best of CD Albright’s artistic excellence is on full display as he delivers a brilliant collection of his best tracks to date.

The first five tracks mirror the rise of the smooth jazz radio phenomenon. So Amazing, Bermuda Nights, In the Mood, My, My, My, and Anniversary were, and still are staples of the smooth jazz radio format. All were released between 1987 and 1990, and all except Bermuda Nights are covers of popular R&B tunes. Each track still sounds fresh even today. These five alone make this an outstanding smooth jazz collection.

These days it’s a very rare CD on which every single song is good or better than the one before it. This CD is certainly one of those rare CDs.

Contributors on the project includes a whole host of talented musicians like Lee Ritenour on track 7, G & Lee, along with Rodney Franklin, Pete Escovedo, Joe Sample and Chuckii Booker just to name a few.

Overall The Very Best of Gerald Albright is an outstanding release. Definitely must have music for anyone who fancy’s themselves a smooth jazz fan. I give it two thumbs up as this is a CD even the casual music fan can and will appreciate Albright’s smooth polished style.

While this entire CD is outstanding the truly standout tunes and SmoothJazz247.com favorites are So Amazing [track 1], Georgia On My Mind [track 6], and Boss Of Nova [track 8]. My SmoothLee Bonus Pick, and the one that got Sore […as in “Stuck On REpeat”] is track 4, My, My, My. Very nice!

Release Notes:

Gerald Albright originally released The Very Best of Gerald Albright on June 19, 2001 on the Atlantic record label.

CD track list follows:

1. So Amazing

2. Bermuda Nights

3. In The Mood

4. My, My, My

5. Anniversary

6. Georgia On My Mind

7. G & Lee

8. Boss Of Nova

9. Sooki Sooki

10. When Morning Comes 2001

11. New Girl On The Block

Dressed To Chill is the latest smooth jazz CD released by the very talented soprano/tenor saxophonist and clarinetist Marion Meadows who once again has delivered a brilliant collection of tracks. I’m confident Meadows fans, and smooth jazz fans alike will be pleased with this one.

Meadows has been a superstar in the smooth jazz genre for quite some time and Dressed To Chill is an excellent illustration as to why.

These days it’s a very rare CD on which every single song is good or better than the one before it. This CD is certainly one of those rare CDs.

The CD launches with the title track, Dressed To Chill and will definitely be heard on smooth jazz radio stations everywhere, and deservedly so. From there Meadows and company proceeds to display why he is considered one the best saxophonist of our time as he mixes his signature phrasings throughout the CD.

Smooth Jazz music fans will recognize some of the well known contributors on the project including guitarists Chuck Loeb and Freddy Fox plus a few other notables as well.

Overall My Point Of View is an outstanding release. What I call, must have music. I give it two thumbs up and is most definitely a worthy addition to any smooth jazz collection.

If you’re a Marion Meadows fan this is a CD your collection should not be without.

While this entire CD is outstanding the truly standout tunes are Dressed To Chill [track 1], Miss Know It All [track 4], and Steppers…Let’s Do This [track 10]. My SmoothLee Bonus Pick, and the one that got Sore […as in “Stuck On REpeat”] is track 7, Coco Flow. A very nice tune!

Release Notes:

Marion Meadows originally released Dressed To Chill on March 23, 2006 on the Heads Up record label.

CD track list follows:

1. Dressed To Chill

2. Remember Me

3. Dance With My Daughter

4. Miss Know It All

5. Bounce

6. I Believe I Can Fly

7. Coco Flow

8. Just My Style

9. Scent Of A Woman

10. Steppers…Let’s Do This

11. 1000 Dreams

12. To Love Her

When the African slaves who were brought to the colonies were first introduced to Christianity and Christian music lyrics they brought with them their own free spirituality and deep appreciation for life. That enthusiasm bled over to create ebullient and emotional gospel music that brought together the unlikely pairing of European Protestant hymns and the fierce rhythms of Africa. Not content to leave their message in the church, however, many gospel artists took their lyrics and went mainstream. Thus was born gospel jazz.

When jazz sprang up among the African-American community in the early 20th century it was a blending of blue notes, improvisation, polyrhythm and syncopation, all traceable to its African roots. Jazz soon became a very popular performance media, garnering a reputation for expressing personal, emotional and spiritual messages. It was only a short step from there to combine Christian music lyrics with the jazz beat and create a genre of music like the world had never heard before.

Thomas A. Dorsey, the “Father of Gospel Music” is credited with being the first to combine this and black gospel with jazz. A blues pianist in his youth, he went on to open the first black gospel music publishing company and wrote “Take My hand, Precious Lord”. The song has since been performed by Elvis Presley, Mahalia Jackson, Aretha Franklin, Clara Ward, Roy Rogers and Tennessee Ernie Ford.

When Dorsey was introducing this to this world he faced an incredible amount of opposition. The combination of church and secular music, although popular now, was strongly frowned upon then, particularly because jazz was often played in clubs and other places of ill repute. One can assume that he was frequently criticized for his choice during the duration of his career. He persevered, however, and his work would later become the standard of traditional gospel.

“The histories of jazz and Gospel are intrinsically linked. They share the roots and ancestry of African slave hollers and field songs,” said artist Kirk Whalum, who released in 1998 an album titled “The Gospel According to Jazz”. The ties between the two are made even more evident in the works of Louis Armstrong, the man who became the symbol of jazz in America. His performances of what are now considered to be “gospel” songs, combining Christian music lyrics with a jazz beat, set the tone for the future of these artists around the world.

Although it was considered scandalous at the time, there can be no doubt that the pairing this and the powerful spirit resulted in a genre of music that was both awe-inspiring and deeply spiritual. Gospel jazz has swept across the nation

Jazz guitar music is so versatile that it incorporates a myriad of musical styles. The most popular are the swing that has further subgroups, jazz-fusion guitar music, and then some Latin variations as well. The most outstanding feature of jazz guitar music is the fact that in the course of the entire song, you will find a section of it devoted to a player who performs a solo, usually an improvisation.

Understanding Jazz Guitar Music

There are certain things specific to jazz guitar music that we must be familiar with. Now, a jazz player can obviously read sheet music through a “fakebook”. This fakebook or the lead sheet, as it is called, has a compilation of brief melodies where you will find the chord symbols over the melody line. It is this melody and the symbols that direct the jazz player. In the conventional sense, the jazz player will not strictly adhere to the notes. When the melody or the ‘head’ is played the first time around, some players in the group will play their own melody even as the others follow the changes in the chord!! In other words, they improvise. When the last solo gets over, the head or melody is repeated at the end of the song.

The whole process is very interesting and you will almost always find a jazz musician capable of playing compatibly with any other group.

The most important thing about jazz guitar music is that the musicians are totally relaxed and obviously enjoying themselves playing. As mentioned earlier, the swing style is the most common form and serves as a background to various techniques called ‘rhythms’ and ‘ornaments’.

The ‘Swing’

When jazz musicians talk about swinging, it implies playing the eighth note in triplets – and not as evenly segregated groups. Rather they are played as the first and third notes. With the rhythm of the swing as the background, if you listen carefully, you will hear three beats to each beat quite distinctly. This three-beat triplet is something you won’t see in the jazz fakebook. In its place, the eighth notes are indicated, and the player understands them as triplets if the style is swing.

Often, jazz guitar music is confused with the blues. Jazz music is much more subtle. Modern jazz guitar music focuses mainly around the guitar strings, the player, lots of improvisation and creativity. The 60’s saw the rise of great jazz guitar players like Wes Montgomery who introduced bop guitar. Subsequently, there were more jazz guitar experts who based their own styles on the traditional jazz guitar music. Keeping with the times, we now have jazz combining swing and even rock and the blues. Jazz guitar music is constantly evolving into new forms, thanks to different jazz guitarists. Rather than just base their improvisations on guitar chords, they like to experiment with a whole lot more.

As an example, we have Derek Bailey whose music was nothing but improvisation and therein lay his genius. The important thing about jazz music is that it can blend any kind of music with it and sound smooth. An example is John McLaughlin whose jazz guitar music was mingled with Spanish flamenco and Indian music. So much so, you cannot just classify some of jazz’s greatest players even though they produced the best music!

The Jazz music sensation began to rub off on other parts of the world which encourages the experimentation of melding their familiar sounds with the essence of Jazz. In Europe’s country in the Region of France came the Quintette Du Hot Club de France who was responsible for the making of the early “Gypsy Jazz”.

The Belgian guitarist Django Reinhardt created gypsy jazz by mixing the style of French Musette which was used in the dance halls, eastern European Folk known as Jazz Manouche, and American swing of the 1930’s. The sound was developed by instruments from the string family which are a steel string guitar, violin, and an upright bass. The atmosphere of the Jazz music is seductive with sudden unpredictable twists, and accelerating rhythms. The French artist Bireli Lagrene plays this unique music with old elements of the past.

Another style of Jazz music that allowed the musicians to express themselves freely was the invention of Avant-garde or free Jazz music. Both of these styles stemmed from the Bebop era, yet produced a relaxed form of harmonic and rhythmic music in the 1940’s and 1950’s. The musicians John Coltrane, Dewey Redman, Charles Mingus, Sun Ra, Sam Rivers, Ornette Coleman and many more were the creators of the free Jazz music. Between the 1960’s and 1970’s the Latin musicians created the Afro-Cuban and Brazilian Jazz Music styles after Bebop musicians Dizzy Gillespie and Billy Taylor cultivated it.

Gillespie and Taylor was influenced by the music of Cuban and Puerto Rican musicians Chico O’farrill, Tito Puente, Chano Pozo, Xavier Cugat, Mario Bauza and Arturo Sandoval. Jazz music expressed in a Latin interpretation was termed Bossa Nova with origins in Samba music which is a mixture of Jazz, classical and pop music from the 20th century. Bossa is a moderate sound of music with Classical harmonic structure from Europe, Samba polyrhythm’s from Brazil and cool music. The tempo of such a work is about 120 beats per minute. The instruments used in this particular sound is nylon stringed guitar, piano, high hat tap of eighths, tapping on the rim of the drum like Sade’s “Sweetest Taboo”, and a vocalist. The sound produced is a new relaxing sound where the acoustic sound of the guitar can lull one to sleep with it’s easy melodic line.

Joao Gilberto and Antonio Carlos Jobim became popular in the sixties with this style of music. The influence of Jazz music returned to the place of its origins in the religious music known as Urban Contemporary Gospel from the spirituals music. Much of spiritual music sung by southern slaves in the past has a haunting dark and mournful sound during the 1800 and 1900’s. The churches know as the sanctified or holy churches took a more happier approach by encouraging member to sing speak their personal testimonies as they celebrated with song and dance.

The sanctified artist Arizona Dranes who was a traveling pastor made recordings that would fit in many musical categories such as blues, and boogie-woogie with the use of Jazz instruments. At the time the Jazz instruments used with religious themed music were percussion and brass instruments.