Stuff Smith: 1909-1967

© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

“Smith was comparatively more adventurous harmonically and in his playing which favored a rough, vibrato-less tone. In the 1930’s he was the first to amplify his violin which enabled him to project his sound over large ensembles. This became standard practice, allowing violinists to perform in a wide variety of Jazz setting.”  

- Christopher Washburne, in Bill Kirchner, ed., The Oxford Companion to Jazz

The violin, which is only occasionally heard in Jazz circles today, had a fairly prominent place in the early history of the music when a number of groups used it as a lead voice along with trumpet and clarinet. Violin and piano duos were a common format in early Jazz, which was partly a reflection of how popular these instruments were in early 20th century family life in America.

The instrument was all but gone when Jazz evolved from the Swing to the Modern era as very few violinists were able to make the transition from swing-to-bop.

Born in 1909, Hezekiah Leroy Gordon “Stuff” Smith was by all accounts good enough on the instrument to tour with Jelly Roll Morton and his Red Hot Peppers before his twentieth birthday. Smith moved to New York in 1936, where he led a quintet at the Onyx club that included Jonah Jones and Cozy Cole; here he began using an amplified violin. Smith was chosen to lead Fats Waller's band after the pianist's death in 1943.

Smith was an innovative musician. He played violin in a raucous style and with a sense of swing that was of unequaled intensity. Harmonically his work was extremely adventurous, and he evolved radical techniques to accommodate his wildly inventive ideas. Wide vibrato, hoarse tone, expressive intonation, and rhythmic creativity are all hallmarks of his style. Dizzy Gillespie has cited Smith as a profound influence upon his playing.

A lull in his career was followed by a series of excellent recordings for Norman Granz in 1957. He began touring more extensively in the 1960s, and in 1965 he settled in Copenhagen, where he remained quite popular until his death.”

Thank goodness for Dizzy Gillespie and Norman Granz as they enabled me to finally catch up to Stuff Smith and his music via the double CD on Verve entitled Stuff Smith - Dizzy Gillespie - Oscar Peterson [314 521 676-2 which combines Stuff’s three Verve LP’s Have Violin, Will Swing , Stuff Smith, and Dizzy Gillespie-Stuff Smith].

It would appear that Norman had a penchant for such actions and all of us in the Jazz world are many times indebted to him for all of the music that he presented and preserved for Jazz annals and Jazz aficionados. As Richard Cook and Brian Morton point out in The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD, 6 Ed. point out:“Verve have, of course, always had a gift for picking up artists relatively late in their career and injecting new life into them. The sessions with Diz and Oscar are beautifully recorded, if not sublimely musical, and one values the record - a generously filled two-CD set….”  

Cook and Morton go on to say:

“Initially influenced by Joe Venuti, Smith devised a style based on heavy bow-weight, with sharply percussive semiquaver runs up towards the top end of his range. His facility and ease … is jaw-dropping. Like many 1920’s players, Smith found himself overtaken by the swing era and re-emerged as a recording and concert artist only after the war, when his upfront style and comic stage persona attracted renewed attention. Even so, he had a thriving club career in the meantime, most famously at the Onyx Club on 5ind Street, and managed to hold his ground while the bebop revolution, which he either anticipated, or was left untouched by, depending on your point of view, went on around him.”

There isn't much information about Stuff Smith in the Jazz canon, but thankfully, Harry Pekar did provide some elaboration on Smith and his approach to Jazz violin in the following excerpts from his insert notes to Stuff Smith - Dizzy Gillespie - Oscar Peterson [314 521 676-2]:

“The violin is one of the easiest instruments to play fast, and many jazz violinists take advantage of this to improvise many-noted solos which, at worst, are overly decorative. Stuff Smith can't be accused of getting too flowery, however; a very original player, he is less indebted to classical violin technique than were his contemporaries Stephane Grappelli, Eddie South, and Joe Venuti. His style seems derived from horn players as much as from any other instrumentalists.

Smith confirms this in Nat Hentoff's liner notes to Have Violin Will Swing, the first of three LPs reissued on this album:

‘I've always visualized myself playing trumpet, tenor, or clarinet. Also, I don't use the full bow — only the end, about six inches, maybe eight inches at times. The reason for that is you can slur more easily, the way a horn would, and you can get more warmth. Using the end of the bow, moreover, causes you to bow the way you breathe. I mean, it's my equivalent of a horn player's breath.Then, If I want to make a staccato accent, I bring the bow up, but almost as if I were hitting a cymbal.’

Louis Armstrong's recording of "Savoy Blues" has been cited as impressing Smith so much that it inspired him to become a jazz musician. And Smith has confirmed that in his comments on the people who marked his style:

‘My major influence was Louis Armstrong. I first heard him in the mid-Twenties and that was the way I wanted to play. As for violinists, I liked Joe Venuti very much, the way he phrased, his speed, his technique. Other people I admired were Coleman Hawkins, Buster Bailey, and Red Nichols. Red for the way he slurred and the quality of his notes, like Bix. As it happened, I didn't get to hear Bix too much, so it was Red's work I knew better. There were also Frankie Trumbauer — the way

he slurred too — and Tommy Dorsey for his tone and the way he delivered a song.

‘Tommy could play with just straight tone and I prefer that. I don't use too much vibrato; you can't afford to in jazz. Your thoughts and your notes come too fast when you play jazz. Accordingly, what you have to work for is what I call a balanced form of melody. Now you can't balance well if you have a straight tone followed by one with vibrato, etc., so the best way, as I hear it, is to play straight tone all the way.’

Smith swings very hard, playing relatively spare, infectious lines and phrases, the kind you tend to memorize and maybe find yourself replaying in your mind a few hours later. There's nothing schmaltzy about his work. His tone is hard and penetrating; in fact, he pioneered the use of amplified violin.

Born in Portsmouth, Ohio in 1909, Hezekiah Leroy Gordon Smith studied violin with his father and began playing professionally at fifteen. He worked with Alphonse Trent's band in Texas from 1926 to 1929, and in the early Thirties Stuff led his own group in the Buffalo, New York area.

Smith's sextet, including Jonah Jones (one of the most advanced swing trumpeters of the time), got a gig at the Onyx Club in New York in 1935. He gained a group of enthusiastic followers who were probably as attracted to his extroverted, humorous vocals as his violin playing.

In 1936 Smith made his first recordings, and one, "I'm a-Muggin'", became a hit. He continued to play well during the Forties and Fifties, but his music, which had anticipated Louis Jordan's, gradually went out of fashion. By the mid-Fifties Stuff was virtually a forgotten man. (Though it should be pointed out that in 1953 or '54 he appeared on the earliest Sun Ra recording thus far unearthed, "Deep Purple", available on the Evidence CD Sound Sun Pleasure.

So it is fortunate that Norman Granz remembered Smith and supervised some 1957 sessions showcasing him.

After the release of these IPs, a revival of interest took place in Smith's work. He recorded again for Verve and also for 20th-century Fox and Epic, and he made successful club appearances in New York and California. In 1965 he left for Europe, where he toured several nations, continuing to play well, and made LPs with other violinists, including Svend Asmussen, Stephane Grappelli, and Jean-Luc Ponty. Stuff settled in Copenhagen in 1965 and died in Munich in 1967. …

In terms of overall appeal, however, the 1957 material on this CD matches anything Stuff ever cut. He's impressive, Gillespie's inspired, and [Wynton] Kelly, [Carl] Perkins, and [Oscar] Peterson display about as much sensitivity and subtlety as they have on record. If you want to hear some Stuff, here's a good place to start.”

For our video tribute to Stuff we’ve chosen his performance of Ja-Da from the Verve reissue on which he is joined by Carl Perkins on piano, Curtis Counce on bass and Frank Butler on drums.

Finding Bix by Brendan Wolfe

© -  Steven A. Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

The following appear in the July 14, 2017 Edition of The Wall Street Journal.

Review: “Young Man With A Horn”

By

John Check

FINDING BIX

By Brendan Wolfe

Iowa, 235 pages, $24.95

“He could barely read music and had to learn his ensemble parts by ear. Forever late and missing trains, he acquired such a taste for Prohibition-era gin that it proved to be his undoing. He would shine bright, recording jazz solos that still bring tears to the eyes of devotees—and empurpled superlatives to the pens of critics. And then he would burn out, dead at 28, his brief life and lasting art the stuff of legend. He, of course, was Bix Beiderbecke, and his story continues to fascinate.

In “Finding Bix: The Life and Afterlife of a Jazz Legend,” Brendan Wolfe draws together the sometimes incomplete facts of Beiderbecke’s biography and the often contentious debates about his significance. Beiderbecke (1903–31), one of the first great jazz soloists to have his work preserved on record, was a cornet player who dazzled not with displays of technique or excursions into the high range but with subtlety and understatement. The relaxed quality of his solos often stood out against the more tentative and even stilted playing of his fellow musicians. Achieving success first with the Wolverines (a small group in the Midwest), he would move on to the larger orchestra of Jean Goldkette, and then to the still-larger, and wildly popular, orchestra of Paul Whiteman, who was billed as “The King of Jazz.”

Calling the cornetist “part Keats and part Fitzgerald,” Mr. Wolfe grants that Beiderbecke has often been portrayed as though he were “a nineteenth-century Romantic hero refitted for the Jazz Age.” Ardent fans of Beiderbecke’s work—Bixophiles, they are called—have for decades tripped over one another in an effort to praise its quality. Mr. Wolfe, who grew up in the cornetist’s birthplace (Davenport, Iowa), tries to separate man and myth, but it turns out to be a difficult task. The more he looks, the more he finds: Beiderbecke has been celebrated in tall tales and adoring biographies, in a French graphic novel and a British television series. And yet, the more he finds—much of it inconclusive and contradictory—the further his subject recedes from him. By some accounts Beiderbecke was a “genius” whose fate was nothing short of “tragic”; by others, a “drunk” whose inability to negotiate everyday life made him “ridiculous.” No summary appears reliable or definitive.

Debates about Beiderbecke’s significance in jazz history tend to revolve around the matter of race. Fairly and with delicacy, without himself taking sides, Mr. Wolfe sets out the views of opposing critics, some believing that Beiderbecke’s contributions are underrated because he was white, others maintaining that he and other white musicians co-opted a musical tradition that was not theirs, impoverishing it in the process.

Mr. Wolfe is adept at introducing details that serve as promissory notes. Sometimes the details are minor, the payoff small yet satisfying. Early in the book he mentions chancing upon an obituary of the illustrator James Flora tucked into the pages of a second-hand biography of Beiderbecke. The significance of Flora, “a father of album cover art,” is revealed much later on, when we are shown a 1947 cover that, in Flora’s artistry, brings to life the important musical and personal relationship between Beiderbecke and his Whiteman bandmate, the saxophonist Frankie Trumbauer.

At other times the details Mr. Wolfe introduces are major. The most striking of these deals with an incident that occurred when Beiderbecke was 18, prompting a police investigation. (He was accused of a “lewd & lascivious act” with a 5-year-old girl; the charges were later dropped.) An early chapter ends with policemen “[knocking] on the door and politely [asking] for Mr. and Mrs. Beiderbecke.” We will learn about the incident itself (some of whose facts, Mr. Wolfe acknowledges, “are a muddle”) only much later in the book. Mr. Wolfe renders this visit from the police so skillfully that it endows the next hundred pages with a heavy sense of foreboding.

One of the book’s strongest chapters tells of a 1929 interview with Beiderbecke appearing in the Davenport Democrat. While calling it “the only known interview of the jazz legend,” Mr. Wolfe adds that “there’s always been something a little off” about it, something “that jazz scholars have struggled to clearly articulate.” After some sleuthing, he discovers that the interview was plagiarized from several sources, borrowing words from music journalists Henry Osgood, Abbe Niles and others. Perhaps Beiderbecke was reticent and the interview came to nothing. Then again, perhaps the temptation to plagiarize was too great for the Davenport reporter to resist.

Whatever the case may be, the result is that Mr. Wolfe’s understanding of Beiderbecke “grows smaller and smaller, until eventually he disappears.”

An engaging book, “Finding Bix” is hampered in places by greater authorial self-indulgence than necessary. Mr. Wolfe, an editor by trade, sometimes resorts to words (“icky,” “wuss”) and formulations (“sound geeks,” “info-laden charts”) that themselves could have been edited out. His habit of interspersing extremely short chapters—the shortest containing 46 words—among long ones feels writer-conscious. When he addresses the reader directly, the effect can be jarring: “You want and need Bix talking to you, and . . . you want and need to keep up with him.”

A more serious problem resides in Mr. Wolfe’s disinclination to discuss Beiderbecke’s music in any appreciable depth. He has long lived with these solos and absorbed them to their last detail, but his familiarity works against him. He perhaps forgets that many readers don’t know what to listen for. How, for example, does Beiderbecke’s style differ from that of Louis Armstrong ? While Mr. Wolfe notes their respective contributions to the history of jazz, he avoids going into specifics. How helpful it would have been to be guided, in a nontechnical way, through a comparison of, say, Beiderbecke’s solo on “I’m Coming Virginia,” recorded in 1927, and Louis Armstrong’s “West End Blues” from a year later. Through such guidance, listeners of today might come to find Bix in the way that matters most: through the medium of his music.

Another way of finding Bix Beiderbecke is in recordings that reflect his influence. In 1941, 10 years after Beiderbecke’s death, the Glenn Miller Orchestra recorded “A String of Pearls.” It would become one of the orchestra’s biggest hits. Two-thirds of the way through, there is a short solo, a minor masterpiece, by the cornetist Bobby Hackett. From its relaxed tone and charming understatement to its easy pacing and cogent construction, everything about the solo echoes Beiderbecke’s aesthetic sensibility. It became so famous that it was later lushly harmonized for the entire Miller trumpet section. The harmonization is plainly a tribute to the artistry of Bobby Hackett—but it is more than that. Bixophiles hear in it a tribute to an earlier cornetist whose influence can never be forgotten.”

—Mr. Check is a professor of music at the University of Central Missouri.

Sammy Nestico And The SWR Big Band - "A Cool Breeze"

© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

SWR Big Band - Südwestrundfunk

Seventeen musicians-one sound. And a very convincing sound, at that. The SWR Big Band has so far been nominated four times for a Grammy - the most important music award in the world. Also it received in 2015 a Jazz Award in Cold ffom German music industry. Enjoyed a great honor in 2011, when it was the first German band ever suggested for the "Premio da Musica Brasileira", Brazil's most important music award. In the face of so much fame, it seems almost modest to say that the SWR Big Band is one of the best big bands in the world.

Jazz, fusion or world music, the repertoire is large. As is the list of guests: Pat Metheny, Gary Burton, Ivan Lins, Curtis Stigers, Roy Hargrove, Roberta Gambarini, Patti Austin, Sammy Nestico, Paula Morelenbaum, Joo Kraus, Toshiko Akiyoshi. Bob Florence, Rob McConnell, Slide Hampton, Maria Schneider, Frank Foster, Bill Holman, Bob Mintzer and Ralf Schmid. Or how about a shade more pop? No problem - for instance, with Paul Carrack, Max Mutzke, Mousse T., Andrew Roachford, Incognito or Götz Alsmann.

Like the big bands in the USA, the SWR Big Band has its own sound, bequeathed to it by its founder and conductor, Prof. Erwin lehn. The starting gun was first heard on April 1, 1951. Back then, the SWR Big Band was still known as a dance orchestra, the Südfunk Tanzorchester, Lehn saw to it that the band was increasingly referred to as the "Daimler of big bands". For it has shared the stage with many stars: Miles Davis, Chick Corea, Astrud Gilberto, Chet Baker, Caterina Valente or even Arturo Sandoval, Ever since the early nineties, the SWR Big Band has been appearing with various bandleaders, depending on the project and style of music.

• www.swrbigband.de

Sammy Nestico is a composer-arranger whose accomplishments and credits have earned him legendary status in the music business.

Today’s word that best describes him is “iconic.”

He has done it all: a host of big band arrangements including those for the Count Basie Band, The Airmen of Note and Germany’s SWR Orchestra, movie and television scores, and a variety of commercials.

Along the way, he has won a bunch of Grammy Awards and, judging by the smile that appears to never leave his face, he has had a great deal of fun doing what he loves to do.

He’s a perfect example of the adage: “Do what you love and the rest will follow.”

On June 9, 2017, SWR Music released A Cool Breeze: Sammy Nestico and the SWR Big Band [SWR 19039] which documents more of the ongoing love affair between this brilliant, Stuttgart-based big band and one of the most accomplished composer-arrangers in the history of big band Jazz.

Everything about this recording is simply splendid from the SWR’s technical execution of the arrangements, to the joyful and magical way Sammy’s charts play out on the listener’s ear to the audio quality which imbues the music with a rich texture and a warm sound. Listening to the music on this recording makes you realize why Big Band Jazz is a category apart and that when it’s done right, no other aspect of Jazz matches its majestic sonority.

The great drummer Louie Bellson once said that sitting behind a drum kit when a big band was in full flight was what it must feel like to “soar like an eagle.” Indeed, Louie loved this analogy so much that he wrote a tune with that title for his big band.

Sammy must have dug it, too, because his arrangements make the SWR big band “fly!”

Sammy offered these comments about his working relationship with the orchestra in the accompanying insert notes booklet:

Notes by Sammy Nestico

“When listening to the SWR Big Band CD, you always expect a high degree of musicianship Even though the orchestra produces variations to comply with changing trends, there is always a "feel" that is distinctive and basically a part of the SWR Big Band. It has always been one of the great experiences of my life to know and perform with these musicians.

Let's talk about the music.

Finding appropriate instrumental colors for Cell Talk was a problem and had to be approached from a different musical viewpoint. I settled on instrumental couplings rather than using a complete sax or brass section. It proved more appropriate due to the variety of cell phone conversations. Listen closely and you may even hear some senseless chatting going on.

Benny Golson has always been one of my favorite writers. Because we chose to take the tune Along Came Betty out of Benny's original jazz format, the band gave it a new personality.

Along with this tune, I've always had have a special feeling for my composition of A Cool Breeze. It was originally written for a young student band, but the melody was pleasing enough to take it on a more adventurous journey. Along with a hot rhythm section, the solos on Along Came Betty and A Cool Breeze are among the best on the recording.

Frankie and Johnny has been taken apart and reassembled with all the vigor that 18 musicians can muster Adding to this happy mood, the brass section is especially aggressive, urged on by Karl Farrent.

When adding Moonlight On The Ganges to the roster of old favorites, the usual instrumentation was embellished with an oboe, sitar, mallets and a gong for more authenticity.

Likewise, The Jazz Music Box highlights a compressed brass section to give the "music box" a little charm ... but alas, like all music boxes, it inevitably winds down. Enjoy!”

In the following insert notes, Ralf Dombrowski provides more background information about the long-standing working relationship between Sammy and the SWR Big Band - Südwestrundfunk and how this recording came about.

“The SWR Big Band bears a responsibility. On the one hand, it started out in the comparably comfortable situation of being securely financed by the fees that make the German broadcasting system possible. This means that the orchestra is not forced to rely on a safe repertoire when it comes to planning and designing its programs, The SWR Big Band can experiment, can invite people and set priorities that may appear surprising at first glance. In fact, the ensemble and its creative minds have managed to be nominated for a Grammy four times in years past and to develop, under bandleaders such as Erwin Lehn or Kurt Edelhagen, a profile independent of the beginnings and the early merits, which

stands for deep roots in the swing and bop tradition as well as for being open to ideas of contemporary sounds and a thrilling portion of fun in playing music. Recently, guests like guitarist Larry Carlton and composer and singer Ivan Lins have been able to take part in this mixture, as well as the entertainer Curtis Stigers or master guitarist Pat Metheny.

A Cool Breeze

Or the composer and arranger Sammy Nestico, as well. The paths of this friendly, white-haired gentleman from Pittsburgh, who has been one of the constants in the world of American music since the 1950s, have crossed with informal regularity those of the SWR Big Band which, with recordings such as "No Time Like The Present" (2004), "Basie-Cally Sammy" (2005), "Fun Time And More" (2008) and "Fun Time And More - Live" (2010), made a key contribution to sharpening the international perception of Nestico's late creative phases. He brought along plenty of experience, for his musical career enabled him to work with many defining and inspiring jazz personalities over the years. And it soon became apparent that he, like fellow arranger Neal Hefti, has an extraordinary sense of the impact of what is simple, clear, and accessible. As a youth, he taught himself to play trombone, worked as a studio musician after getting his degree from Duquesne University, and at a time when big bands were dying out,

cultivated his fascination for large ensembles by working in Washington primarily for the US Marines and Air Force orchestras.

Film music then attracted him in the Sixties. Nestico moved to Los Angeles, composing for films and television series and taking care of the didactic and pedagogical reworking of many classics and works of his own. Hundreds of charts came into being and were passed around at American schools and universities, such as the music for the Time-Life Big Band, which was involved in meaningfully transforming the ensemble jazz that had become traditional. In addition, Nestico's cousin Sal found him a job with one of the titans of the business: around 1968 he began arranging for the Count Basie Band, a collaboration that continued into the mid-eighties. Since this time at the latest, he has been considered one of the most important arrangers of trenchant modern jazz and was engaged by Ray Anthony, Frank Sinatra, Frank Stallone and even Phil Collins to give the large orchestra its proper, succinct form.

The Sammy Nestico Project

At any rate, he has found his style, and it sends the pros into raptures. "On the one hand, you notice after four or five bars that it is Sammy Nestico," says Marc Godfroid, trombonist with the 5WR Big Band who, among other things, attended to communication with the master on the other side of the world while the Sammy Nestico Project was being recorded. "On the other, he is still constantly developing.”  The music he wrote specially for this CD, for instance, is quite different from what you could hear from him five years ago." The enthusiasm for the repertoire on which the recordings of January 2016 are based, ran through the whole troupe of musicians. The casual precision with which the possibilities of orchestral configuration are boiled down to their essence is particularly extraordinary. Nestico's pieces are concentrates of lightness. You think you understand them at first glance, and yet under their accessible surface they conceal a mature complexity whose precision in the control of emotions and moods, in the coloring of the sounds, and in the intensification of the song dramaturgy brings out the magic of the overall impression.

"Beautiful things never disturb" is a motto that Nestico had already adopted while working with Count Basie. It also enables him to leave prevailing fashions behind. The music he wrote for the SWR Big Band sounds funky, has elements of fusion in its ingredients, but by the same token swing, a pinch of soul and the emotionalism of orchestral expression. It can scale back to a reduced combo momentum only to lead logically to the other extreme of opulent sound a little later. It is the intensification of compositional skill, which goes beyond what can be directly apprehended from the score, a creative mastery that baritone saxophonist Pierre Paquette sums up by saying, "Sammy is the boss!" However, this is only possible because a basis for mutual understanding was created during more than ten years of collaboration between the composer and the orchestra, a collaboration built not only on notes, but also on intuition.

Thus it also became possible to achieve the recordings of the Sammy Nestico Project with emphatic finesse even though the "boss" was sitting tight thousands of kilometers away in San Diego. In contrast to earlier collaborations, where Nestico himself stood on the podium of the SWR Big Band, he had decided not to undertake the hassle of intercontinental travel just before his 92nd birthday. Even so, Skype enabled him to take part in the recordings, at least as a digital onlooker. Again and again, pieces just recorded were sent to his computer, eliciting tears of joy from the elderly gentlemen, who would say, "I am only hearing that through the small speaker on the laptop, but it sounds great. We have already made four records, but this one here is the best, without a doubt!" The musicians who were standing around the screen in the SWR studio smiled and nodded. They lived up to their responsibility and experienced a little bit of happiness, as well.”

The American wing of Naxos International is handling the distribution and Michael Bloom’s team is in charge of media relations: musicpro@earthlink.net

Rosario Giuliani - Sassofonista Straordinario [alto saxophonist extraordinaire]

© -  Steven A. Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

“The musicianship of Rosario Giuliani is exhilarating.  His total package of performance, composition and improvisation is not so much a breath of fresh air as it is a gale force wind blowing across a landscape littered with Charlie Parker and John Coltrane disciples.  He has a confident, masculine tone that is at once assertive and tender, betraying bit of Julian Adderley and Eric Dolphy.”

- C. Michael Bailey, All About Jazz, Review of Mr. Dodo, Dreyfus Jazz CD [FDM 36636-2]

“The overwhelming immediacy, passion and extraordinary swing in enriched by the surprising maturity with which Rosario handles the most difficult and compelling repertoire.”

- Paolo Piangiarelli, owner-operator, Philology records

“The discovery of Rosario Giuliani by a large audience is a blessing. At 34, this sax player is one of Italy's hidden treasures and his reputation keeps growing there. Swift, lyrical and inspired, endowed with an alto and soprano sound of blazing intensity, that owes as much to Cannonball Adderley or Jackie McLean as it does to Puccini, Giuliani presently shows a bold maturity. As both a sideman and a leader, he has, until now, mostly graced the stages and studios of his native peninsula, astonishing both European and American musicians who crossed his path. For six years now, the Rosario Giuliani quartet has been the laboratory for a personal, genuine, and invigorating vision of the Parker and Coltrane legacy - a crucible of creative and generous musicianship. Following a couple of recordings on small labels, this is his first album on the international scene. With it, the Rome-based reedman is likely to set the record straight, ruffle some feathers in the process, and provide many listeners with the whiff of fresh air they've been waiting for. At last!”

- Thierry Quenum, Rosario Giuliani Quartet: LUGGAGE [Dreyfus Jazz FDM 36618-2]

“I met Rosario Giuliani some years ago (he happened to be part of an orchestra in one of my recording sessions); after hearing him playing I nicknamed him "thousand-notes boy". I realised I had met a young sax virtuoso, perfectly mastering a refined and unexceptionable technique: an authentic improvisator. 

And you know, improvisation is the real essence of jazz. Capable of such personal interpretations (he seems to "live" each theme note by note, interval after interval) whose rigour and coherence I'm pleased to define almost classical, in this CD Rosario succeeds in giving the impression of a live stage, thus shortening distances between players and listeners and, therefore, heating the cold atmosphere usually pervading recording rooms. He has got sufficient charisma to become the catalyst agent of the group, gathering four extraordinary players: Pietro Lussu on piano and keyboards, Fabrizio Bosso on trumpet, Joseph Lepore on double-bass, and Lorenzo Tucci on drums.

Everything is plunged in a magic perception of time, non technical, where notes fly around the executed themes while different signals and sensations follow one another as if they were waving. Giuliani performs such long solos neither schematic nor repetitive. He has got a boundless fantasy and expresses himself playing notes which amplify the basic chords. His music is direct, harsh, delicate, introspective; his phrasing produces somewhere "note storms" His style is an exhausting outline of Parker's, Coltrane's and sometimes Ornette Coleman's musical experiences, filtered by his personal "search for freedom". The result is an harmonically rich music, absolutely charming with its evolved melodies and swing.”

- Gianni Ferrio, Tension [Schema Records SCCD 309]

Italy is the home of clothes that people around the world love to wear; cars they love to drive and an appetizing cuisine that is universally popular.

It is also the home of a number of first rate Jazz alto saxophonists

dating back to the late Massimo Urbani [1957-1993], after whom Italy’s most prestigious Jazz award is named, including Gianluigi Trovesi, Paolo Recchia, Francisco Cafiso, Stefano Di Battista and Rosario Giuliani.

Indeed, if you like your alto playing searing, sensual and sonorous, welcome to the world of Rosario Giuliani. His is an alto tone that is big, biting and burning – all at the same time; it is a sound that totally envelopes the listener.

In addition to Adderley and Dolphy [and perhaps even some ‘early years’ Art Pepper], Giuliani also incorporates a style that is reminiscent of Chris Potter before he moved on to “the big horn,” especially the Potter of Presenting Chris Potter on Criss Cross [CD 1067].

Other alto saxophone contemporaries such as Jesse Davis, Kenny Garrett, Jon Gordon, Vincent Herring, and Jim Snidero, and are also reflected in Giuliani’s style, and yet, despite these acknowledgements, he is very much his own man.

Whether it’s running the changes on finger-poppin’ bop tunes, improvising on modal scales and odd time signatures or finding his way movingly and expressively through ballads, Giuliani enveloping sound is a force and a presence. He has a technical command of the instrument that lets him go wherever he wants to on the horn including employing the dash difficult Paul Desmond device of improvising duets with himself.

Giuliani’s recordings will also provide an opportunity to hear some wonderful rhythm section players frequenting today’s Italian Jazz scene such as pianists Dado Moroni, Pietro Lussu, and Franco D’Andrea; bassists Gianluca Renzi, Jospeh Lepore, Pietro Ciancaglini, Dario Deidda, and Rimi Vignolo; drummers, Lorenzo Tucci, Benjamin Henocq [Swiss/Italian], Massimo Manzi and Marcello Di Leonardo. All of these guys are virtuoso players who can really bring it.

Rosario’s music is a reflection of a young player finding his way through the modern Jazz tradition with straight-ahead, bop-oriented tunes such as Wes Montgomery’s Road Song, re-workings of Ornette Coleman’s The Blessing and Invisible and, as is to be expected from today’s young, reed players, Coltranesque extended adventures such as the original Suite et Poursuite, I, II, III.

Interestingly his tribute to Coltrane album is done as a Duets for Trane in which he an pianist Franco D’Andrea perform on nine Coltrane originals such as Equinox, Central Park West and Like Sonny. There is very little “sheets of sound” to be found anywhere on this recording, but rather, an introspective and original examination of Coltrane’s music by someone whose playing would have made him smile.

Rosario has a lovely way with ballads as can be heard in his sensitive and thoughtful interpretations of Tadd Dameron’s On a Misty Night, Bob Haggart’s What’s New and Michele Petrucciani’s lovely Home.  

Many other slow tunes are given a prominent place on his recordings.  He even put out an early recording devoted entirely to standards such as Skylark, What is This Thing Called Love and Invitation that are interspersed with an original, four-part blues odyssey entitled Blues Connotation. It is his way of showing his conservancy with these musical forms and to pay homage to these strains within the Jazz tradition.

Giuliani is in demand by movie composers such as Morricone, Umilani, and Ortolani and has a CD out entitled Tension that features his interpretation of Jazz themes from Italian movies.

Many of his CD’s are still available via online and retail sellers and collectively represent staggering body of high quality playing. Rosario Giuliani is a player of distinction who makes Jazz, in all its modern manifestations, an exciting adventure.

I recommend him to you without reservation as someone who will reward you many times over should you chose to include him and his associates in your musical vocabulary.

Dave Stryker - "Strykin' Ahead"

© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

On his Live at the Blue Note CD, Paquito D’Rivera, introduces the band members to the audience with a particular emphasis on the diverse regions in The Americas that they hail from and then going on to compare this diversity of the band to “The United Nations.”

When the audience snickers at the comparison, Paquito jumps up and shouts: “Yeah, but this band works” which then has the audience audibly ROFL.

It is a funny line, but every time I get a new CD by Dave Stryker, or a notification of a forthcoming club date by his band, or read a write-up about a concert appearance by Dave’s group I think of Paquito’s line - “Yeah, but this band works.”

And why not?

If you have chops like Dave’s; his musical sensibilities; his uncanny ability to put together interesting instrumentations; his skill at selecting just the right band mates to make Jazz with; wouldn’t you want to work all the time, too?

It becomes like anything you’re good at; you want to do it as often as possible but occasionally vary the context to keep it from getting stale.

The following insert notes by Ted Panken provides a context for the new recording as well as fine write-ups on the musicians and the music on the date.

It also underscores a lot of feelings that I share about Dave such as the statement that he is a “... an in-the-moment improviser with deep roots in the tradition who knows how to push the envelope without damaging the contents and “... his long-standing practice of presenting originals and reharmonized standards from the jazz and show music songbooks.”

“The notion of moving forward by triangulating a space between creative and pragmatic imperatives is a consistent thread throughout Dave Striker's four decades in the jazz business, not least on Strykin' Ahead, his 28th CD as a leader. Stryker augments his working trio of Jared Gold on organ and McClenty Hunter on drums with vibraphone player Steve Nelson, all on-board for a second go-round after their stellar contributions to last year's Eight-Track II.

Like the leader, Nelson is a preternaturally flexible and in-the-moment improviser with deep roots in the tradition who knows how to push the envelope without damaging the contents. Stryker internalized those imperatives on a 1984-1986 run win Brother Jack McDuff, and he received further invaluable training in the art of musical communication during a decade on the road with Stanley Turrentine, to whom he paid homage on the 2015 release Don't Mess With Mister T.

In contrast to his Eight Track II conception of putting his spin on pop hits of his formative years, Stryker returns to his long-standing practice of presenting originals and reharmonized standards from the jazz and show music songbooks. "Shadowboxing" is a burning 14-bar minor bhes; his well-considered chordal variations on Wayne Shorter's "Footprints" proceed to a simmering 5/4 figure. Next is "New You" (a stimulating Stryker contrafact of the oft-played "There Will Never Be Another You"). He personalizes Billy Strayhorn's "Passion Flower," set to Hunter's insinuating bossa nova-funk groove. The title track "Strykin’ Ahead" has a Cadillac-racing-down-the-freeway-feel; he imbues the lovely melody of "Who Can I Turn To" with the full measure of his plush, inviting tone.

That Stryker knows his Albert King is evident on the slow-drag "Blues Down Deep," which evokes wee-hours third sets in the inner city grills and lounges of Stryker's apprentice years. He knows his bebop, too. On Clifford Brown's "Joy Spring," the solo flights over Stryker's "modernized" progressions transpire over Hunter's drum-bass beats and crisp, medium-up four-on-the cymbal; on the chop-busting "Donna Lee," all members springboard off a churchy vamp and Hunter's funk-infused swing.

"I've always wanted to write vehicles that are fun and interesting to blow over," Stryker says. "Trying to come up with a beautiful melody that lasts is very fulfilling. Writing is a big part of my voice in this music." Stryker is too modest to say that his voice is also a big part of jazz, to which he's devoted a career marked by consistent application of the values that he espouses. But that's all right — I'll say it for him.

The following video features Dave, Steve, Jared and McClenty of Clifford Brown’s Joy Spring replete with some new harmonies for this old Jazz standard.