Archives

• Views: 196 Fred Hersch

  In the 1990s, the pianist Fred Hersch entered a period of staggering productivity, an output that solidifed his place in the front rank of jazz pianists. As a solo artist, band leader, and vocal accompanist, Hersch is without peer. Fritz Byers appreciates Hersch's art.  (January 1998)

• Views: 759 Diana Krall

  Fritz Byers on Diana Krall's early recordings, which place her in the rarefied company of jazz artists who combine a distinctive jazz-flavored vocal style with the dynamics of the best jazz pianists. (June 1998)

• Views: 255 Big Band Renaissance

  Big Band jazz came back to life in the mid '90s. Fritz Byers places the revival in context in a review of Big Band Rensaissance: The 1940s and Beyond from Smithsonian Recordings.  (A review from 1998)

• Views: 202 A Great Day in Harlem

  They've made a movie about the creation of the most famous jazz photograph ever taken -- it's a small but riveting movie that hints at nearly the full range of aesthetic pleasures that linger in jazz and its attendant mythologies.  Fritz Byers reviews A Great Day in Harlem.  (July 1997)

• Views: 264 In Memory: Frank Sinatra

  On the occasion of Frank Sinatra's passing, Fritz Byers considers the accomplishments of the greatest of American singers. (June 1998)

• Views: 303 Barry Harris Considered

  The pianist Barry Harris is a be-bop classicist who has labored in the jazz mainstream since the 1950s, when he first became a  mainstay of the Detroit jazz scene.  Fritz Byers considers Harris's career. (October 1998)

• Views: 1447 On Ornette Coleman

  Ornette Coleman made his East Coast debut at the Five Spot Cafe in Greenwich Village in November 1959, and in his own fitting understatement, “all hell broke loose.”  Since then, Coleman has not stopped growing.  The jazz world gradually came to him.  Fritz Byers on Coleman's singular path to the apex of the music. (July 1998)