The Jazz Podcast

New York saxophonist Daniel Bennett has been hailed as one of the most original and unpredictable musical voices of his generation. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette describes Bennett's music as a mix of "modern jazz and avant-pop." Daniel Bennett has been featured in Timeout New York, NPR and the Boston Globe. The UK Jazz Journal called Bennett, "an outspoken voice of hope," during the Covid 19 pandemic. Daniel Bennett Group was recently voted 'Best New Jazz' in Hot House Magazine. The trio is currently promoting their 9th studio album, 'New York Nerve.' The Daniel Bennett Group performs regularly at the Blue Note (NYC), Ronnie Scott's (London), Tomi Jazz (NYC) and Herb Alpert's Vibrato Club (LA). Bennett is a touring clinician and associate director of the New York Jazz Academy in Times Square. Daniel Bennett played woodwinds in 'Blank! The Musical,' the first fully improvised musical to launch on a national stage. The New York Times called the show, "Witty, Likable and Ludicrous!" Daniel Bennett orchestrated the music for 'Whitman at the Whitney,' a stage adaptation of the poetry of Walt Whitman. The production debuted at the Whitney Museum in New York City. Daniel Bennett's theatrical works have strongly influenced his eclectic sound and musical storytelling abilities as a bandleader. Daniel Bennett Daniel Bennett is an endorsing artist for Morgan Mouthpieces. 

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Beboptical Illusion is the 3rd release from drummer and band leader Gaz Hughes, today we preview the new music on the show. This album features the same trio from his previous albums but marks a leap forward in the band's evolution as most of the tracks are original compositons.

The album was recorded in August 2022. It is being released on 3rd Feb 2023 and will be supported by a huge UK tour.

For more details see:  www.gazhughesmusic.com

credits

released February 3, 2023 

Gaz Hughes - Drums 
Andrezej Baranek - Piano 
Ed Harrison - Double Bass 

Recorded by Dave Speakman 
Mixed by Dave Speakman & Gaz Hughes 
Mastered by Pete Maher 

Photography by Nathan McDowell 
Art work by Tom Sullivan.

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Originally from the Netherlands, vocalist, and songstress, Vivienne Aerts is barely categorizable in genre or style. She plays in band formation, duo, solo, supplemented with synthesizer, loop station, and effects. Vivienne surprises challenges and tells stories. Her lyrics travel to the core of recognition; talk to the soul and open a barrel of emotions. Heartbreaking, singing of happiness, sometimes humorous, she tells about the things that make life beautiful.

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 Faye MacCalman is a performer, composer-songwriter and improviser on saxophone, clarinet and voice. Freewheeling through genre boundaries inspired by jazz, blues-folk, minimalism and rock to name a few, Faye fuses experimental songwriting with off kilter patterns, heartfelt melodies and surreal atmospheres. 

Faye is bandleader of critically acclaimed jazz-art-rock trio Archipelago, nominated for UK Jazz Act of the Year in the 2021 Jazz FM Awards after releasing their 2021 album ‘Echoes To The Sky’. Faye is also a current Jerwood Arts / Cheltenham Jazz Festival fellow, and her collaborations include Arun Ghosh, Anna Meredith, Zoe Rahman, Maximo Park and The Unthanks.  

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Quentin and Rob join the show to tell Tara Minton all about their new album, Five Way Split. Out March 17th on Ubuntu Music. Guest intro by Caitlin L-M.

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Born in 1967 to the late, great bassist Jamil Nasser, Muneer 's exposure to the jazz idiom was early and powerful. In 1976, "My dad took me to see Dizzy Gillespie at the Village Gate and Dizzy blew the place apart.  I had to get a trumpet and weeks later I did."  In 1979, he went to the International Art of Jazz Workshop for college students. Dave Burns, a trumpeter in Gillespie's Big Band, had reservations about his age. Muneer's talent, however, overshadowed this concern.  "Mr. Burns acceptance fortified my confidence and I began studying with him." Muneer also received private instruction from George Coleman, Jimmy Owens, Oliver Beener, and Webster Young. These workshops and lessons taught him the basics of jazz improvisation, which were tested at serious jam sessions conducted by Eddie Henderson, Ted Curson, Tommy Turrentine, Barry Harris, C Sharpe, and Gil Coggins. "If you couldn't play, they would bench you with quickness and give you a homework assignment." As a youngster, Muneer saw many masters in concert such as George Coleman, Randy Weston, Lou Donaldson, Woody Shaw, Roy Eldridge, and Phineas Newborn.

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As an acclaimed trombonist, composer, and producer, Delfeayo Marsalis has also dedicated his prolific career to music theatre and education. Along with the Marsalis family of musicians including his father Ellis, the artist was destined to a life in music.

Marsalis has toured internationally with jazz legends such as Ray Charles, Art Blakey, Max Roach, Elvin Jones and Slide Hampton, as well as leading his own groups.

At the age of 17, Marsalis began his career as a producer and has to date produced over 120 recordings garnering one Grammy award and several nominations.

In 2008, he formed the Uptown Jazz Orchestra, a highly entertaining ensemble that focuses on maintaining important jazz traditions such as riff playing, New Orleans polyphony and spontaneous arrangements.

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Tomas Fujiwara is a Brooklyn-based drummer and composer. Described as “a ubiquitous presence in the New York scene…an artist whose urbane writing is equal to his impressively nuanced drumming” (Troy Collins, Point of Departure), Tomas is an active player in some of the most exciting music of the current generation, with his bands Triple Double (with Gerald Cleaver, Mary Halvorson, Brandon Seabrook, Ralph Alessi, and Taylor Ho Bynum), Tomas Fujiwara & The Hook Up (with Jonathan Finlayson, Brian Settles, Halvorson, and Michael Formanek) and The Tomas Fujiwara Trio (with Alessi and Seabrook); his collaborative duo with cornetist Taylor Ho Bynum; the collective trio Thumbscrew (with Halvorson and Formanek); and a diversity of creative sideman work with forward thinking peers like Tomeka Reid and Matana Roberts. In The New York Times, Nate Chinen writes, “Drummer Tomas Fujiwara works with rhythm as a pliable substance, solid but ever shifting. His style is forward-driving but rarely blunt or aggressive, and never random. He has a way of spreading out the center of a pulse while setting up a rigorous scaffolding of restraint...A conception of the drum set as a full-canvas instrument, almost orchestral in its scope.” 

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It would be impossible to have grown up in the multicultural melting pot of Birmingham and not have your very soul steeped in music.
I was born between Balsall Heath and Moseley;  home of Ocean Colour Scene, UB40, The Beat, the drummer Bev Bevan,  the “Mostly Jazz Festival”  and for a short while,  the writer J.R.R Tolkien. My local high street, Ladypool road, now famous for it’s Balti restaurants,  had at one end of it one of the most renowned Reggae record shops in Britain; “Don Christie’s”. 

Halfway down was “The Red Lion” pub where live jazz was played three nights a week. It’s claim to fame was infact, having been the location for the UB40 video “Red, Red Wine” a few years earlier but for me,  it was a  wonderful new world into which I snuck (all at a much too early age and of course unbeknown to my parents) and where I absorbed not only jazz,  but a bohemian, slightly naughty and thrilling world where grown ups drank and partied (mine didn’t)  and where there was something exciting in the air that I couldn’t  quite  fathom or quite put a name to yet but… I think it began with S. Further down this same road led to Moseley Village,  an area known for being creative, cosmopolitan and the focus of artistic and student activities with plenty of pubs, restaurants and live music, home of The Moseley Folk Festival and of the aforementioned “Mostly Jazz, Funk & Soul” Festival.

My first proper CD as a vocalist was “Just in Time” and was produced by award winning jazz singer Ian Shaw. It was launched at The 606 Club in 2005 and I’ve continued on a brilliant jazz singer journey ever since, whilst at all times following the advice that bass player Geoff Gascoyne gave me  to “Always play with the best people. Don’t be afraid to call them. They’ll take the gig!”

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Joel Schoch was born in 1991. He started playing the piano at the age of 9. He finally fell for composing music in the context of his High School graduation work, where he composed the music for the musical "Verbutzt". After a preliminary course in film music in Bonn (DE), he studied "Film and Media Music" at the Hogeschool van de Kunsten in Arnhem (NE), before completing his Bachelor's and Master's degrees in "Composition for Film, Theatre and Media (FTM)" at the Zurich University of the Arts. During his studies he wrote music for ensembles of various sizes,  composed music for games, wrote a children's musical and composed a 3D radioplay.


His soundtrack to the award-winning indie computer game Far: Lone Sails, which was released in 2018 for pc and in 2019 for playstation an xbox, became known to a wider public. For the soundtrack he got a nomination for the German Developer Award in the category: Best Sound.

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