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Soul Music, Page 4

Ramsey Lewis, Tower of Power, Anthony Hamilton and More Help Playboy Jazz Festival Turn 40.

Playboy Jazz Festival Celebrates 40th Anniversary at The Hollywood Bowl
 
by A. Scott Galloway
 
Under clear blue skies, 80-degree temps with a sweet breeze blowin’ on both days, the “Playboy Jazz Festival” celebrated its 40th anniversary with days split almost squarely between World Music leaning on Saturday and Jazz on Sunday.
 
Saturday June 9 began with the traditional Los Angeles County High School For The Arts Jazz of promising young students followed by Columbian party band Monsieur Perine’. Things got really interesting when blind 17 year-old organ prodigy Matthew Whitaker and his trio wowed the crowd with the passionate and eclectic set list of his original “Play it Back,” the `60s pop hit “More Today Than Yesterday” by Spiral Staircase made famous on the jazz side by Charles Earland, the Brazilian gem “Mais Que Nada,” John Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme,” and the finale of a dual medley of Earth Wind and Fire’s “In the Stone/September” with Stevie Wonder’s “As/I Wish” – what a prodigious talent and people-pleaser.
 

Matthew Whitaker

Sade | “Flower of the Universe” (From Disney’s ‘A Wrinkle In Time’)


 
Sade
“Flower of the Universe (from Disney’s ‘A Wrinkle in Time’)”
(Sony)
 
A Record Reflection by A. Scott Galloway
 
Sade peeks over the horizon like a sunrise with a special offering to the soundtrack of the Disney film “A Wrinkle in Time” with the dreamy “Flower of the Universe” – the band’s first studio recording since the Soldier of Love CD in 2010. Mellow as a Zen mantra, the piece recalls past floating and ambient Sade gems such as “I Never Thought I’d See the Day” and “Like a Tattoo.”

Sy Smith | Sometimes a Rose Will Grow in Concrete


 
Sy Smith Blossoms into Full Singer/Songwriter Bloom on “Sometimes a Rose…”
 
A Record Reflection by A. Scott Galloway
 
Sy Smith has been a work in progress as a most valuable session and touring singer for others, and a developing artist in her own right with four acclaimed albums behind her. Her latest, Sometimes a Rose Will Grow in Concrete, is her first since 2012, its title foreshadowing that a sister has been through some things but come out the other side steeped in artistry, ancestry and ‘Les Fleur de la Corazon.’

Soul Man Owens’ Country Cash Project Pays Off Some of the Time


 
Bryan Owens & The Deacons of Soul
Soul of Cash
(LIFE Arts Music)
A Record Reflection by A. Scott Galloway
 
The junction where R&B and Country Music intersect has been traversed by many artists from Charlie Rich, Lucinda Williams and The Rolling Stones going one way to Ray Charles, Esther Phillips and Gladys Knight & The Pips heading in the other. The fourth and latest project by singer Brian Owens & The Deacons of Soul is an intermittently successful yet tight 8-song CD, Songs of Cash, that finds the man and his band tippin’ their Stetsons to one of Country’s tallest figures, Johnny Cash.

Fantasia | Christmas After Midnight


 
Fantasia | Christmas After Midnight
Concord Music
by Peggy Oliver
 
When it comes down to the annual barrage of holiday musical fare, music connoisseurs can be very fickle about their beloved artists singing Christmas set-in-stone standards. Sometimes the best intended orchestrations and re-constructions of hymns and pop pieces fails to elicit anything remarkable from past renditions.

Take 6 LIVE at Jazz Alley in Seattle, WA | Sept. 21st, 2017


 
Take 6 Concert Review
(Mark Kibble, Joey Kibble, Alvin Chea, David Thomas, Claude V. McKnight III and Khristian Dentley)
September 21, 2017
Jazz Alley – Seattle, WA
 
The house was packed and rightfully so as six debonair gentlemen named Take 6 claimed and owned the stage, engaging the audience with their extraordinary repertoire of inventive re-imaginations of pop, jazz and gospel classics, plus a few of their own originals. Most of the night focused on their vocal instrumental interplay and crisp harmony skills, though on a couple of occasions, several members played acoustic guitars and piano.

Krystle Warren | Three The Hard Way


 
Krystle Warren | Three The Hard Way
by Peggy Oliver
 
When musical boundaries are loosed, a musician experiences an indescribable freedom as their notes jump so high off the page. As an independent artist who shapes her music in several directions, Krystle Warren dives in with full steam as a multi-instrumentalist and as a profound storyteller who digs so deep spiritually and uncompromising emotions.

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