Features written for publication or as blog posts.
Photo by Walter Atkins SPRINGS RISING From her current tour and album to her latest muscle car, things are looking up for Kandace Springs. by CRISTOFER GROSS andace Springs has always acknowledged those who have contributed to her rise within the jazz world. Now the gifted 31-year-old singer-songwriter-musician is putting it on the record. Though […]
PREVIEW SFJazz Honors Miles, Stone Milestones Vibraphonist Warren Wolf previews octet’s October 25 Segerstrom Center concert. In 1969, Miles Davis and Sylvester Stone had milestone years. SFJAZZ Collective, which by design has a milestone year every year, is marking the half-century anniversaries of those artists’ landmarks with fresh arrangements of music from Davis’s In a
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HISTORIES Hobnobbing with Obsession A chronicle of my immersion into Sondheim’s ‘Sweeney Todd’ and and a healing luncheon with the show’s star, George Hearn. by Cristofer Gross, from AirCal Magazine, June 1981 his is not a review: it’s an exorcism. A year ago, through the original cast album of 1979’s Best Musical, I began to
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PREVIEW: MARCH 20-24, 2019 Bring in the Jazz-Funk Lettuce and John Scofield create a fusion septet for five California concerts in Los Angeles and San Francisco. hough they graduated from Berklee College of Music nearly a generation apart, guitarist John Scofield and the founding members of Lettuce are in the same elite class of jazz-funk
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A BI-COASTAL TLC WEEKEND Drummer-Composer-Educator Terri Lyne Carrington to perform in Los Angeles on November 9 and Newark on November 11 by CRISTOFER GROSS n Friday evening, November 9, drummer-composer-educator Terri Lyne Carrington will headline a special concert in UCLA’s Royce Hall. Two days later she will be at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center
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LEVELING FANS AND PLAYING FIELDS After flooring a jazz concert crowd with her celebration of legendary women at UCLA Terri Lyne Carrington launches a new Jazz and Gender Justice program at Berklee. by CRISTOFER GROSS n 1998, Terri Lyne Carrington was the second musician to arrive for one of Herbie Hancock’s Gershwin’s World recording sessions.
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PHOTO: ARNIE GOODMAN JOHN MAYALL’S BLUES LONG PLAYER: The 82-year-old ‘Godfather of British Blues’ has new recordings and tours as the Blues Hall of Fame inducts him. by CRISTOFER GROSS hile rock n’ roll of the 1950s has long been filed under oldies and the once mighty music of the Sixties and Seventies are hobbled
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REEVES AND PORTER SATISFY Dianne Reeves and Gregory Porter share the bill in Costa Mesa by CRISTOFER GROSS he Orange County big-venue jazz year got off to an encouraging start January 16, with Dianne Reeves and Gregory Porter each performing solid hour-plus sets at the Segerstrom Center for the Arts. The audience, more age- and
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A JONES FOR MILES Musician, composer and educator Sean Jones is in the trumpet chair for SFJAZZ Collective’s 2016-17 tribute tour to Miles Davis. by CRISTOFER GROSS n 1988, Sean Jones was a 10-year-old learning to play drums in Warren, Ohio when he heard that his grandfather played trumpet during World War II. That, and
CHARGED PARTICLES Bonding with Chick Corea Elektric Band’s high-speed fusion at L.A.’s Catalina Jazz Club. by CRISTOFER GROSS he May 2018 maiden voyage of Jazz Generations could not have had a more apt or exciting setting. For its first outing, the new group of jazz patrons and players out to build pan-genre and cross-generational audiences
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