Watch this video clip and listen to the magic music of Arne Jansen and his trio performing a tune called Release. While in our last post with the Arne Jansen Trio the song they performed was a uniformly quiet piece called On the Shore, this composition passes through different moods, from quiet long electric guitar notes while the drummer is playing the cymbals with mallets to parts where the drums become much louder and hammering while the guitar player plays faster runs on his instruments too. Let’s not forget Eva Kruse on the double bass, unfortunately the sound quality of this recording doesn’t allow to hear her clearly (At least not with the poor speakers built into my laptop).
This kind of music reminds me the records that used to appear on the ECM label during the 1970s and 80s, with artists like Jan Gabarek or Terje Rypdal, to mention just two of a long list who all compared a certain sound on these records. Sounds like open spaces.
I cannot avoid to mention that Eric Schaefer recently performed a very convincing concert in Mexico City as the drummer of the Carsten Daerr Trio. Look out for this young german drum talent, we’re sure that he soon will participate in more interesting projects.
The Arne Jansen Trio with Eric Schaefer and Eva Kruse Performing Release
Sunshine of Your Lover Performed by the Jimi Hendrix Experience Band Live in Stockholm
Sunshine of Your Love performed by an exceptional trio of the psychodelic rock epoche: the Jimi Hendrix Experience. Compare this version to the interpretation The Cream performs of the same song. Here we can observe lots of improvisation. The sound quality is not the best and it is kind of annoying on the bass guitar solo, however, this is a great video document of the time and we think everybody should know it.
The Cream Performing Sunshine of Your Love
In this video you can see and listen to the legendary blues rock band Cream performing a classic tune called Sunshine of Your Love. The Cream was a non typical rock group since it counted with only three musicians instead of the usual four or five. These musicians were Eric Clapton on the lead guitar and vocals, Ginger Baker on the drums and Jack Bruce on the electric bass guitar and vocals.
The same song was interpreted by the Jimi Hendrix Experience, check both versions and decide which one is your favourite.
Some comment on this video on the youtube site says: “Ginger Baker turned the rock world on its head with this amazing display of musicianship. While every other drummer at the time was busy emphasizing the off-beat, Baker drove relentlessly at the first beat and gave a sense of urgency to what, in other hands, would have been quite an average song. Brilliant!” That is an excellent comment which we fully subscribe.
Avishai Cohen Trio Performing Emotional Storm Live on Stage
In this video you can see and listen to the Avishai Cohen Trio featuring Avishai Cohen on the accoustic bass, Mark Giuliana on drums and Shai Maestro on the piano. Avishai Cohen is a recognized jazz bass player who has performed with such great jazz legends as Chick Corea and many others. In this video the band plays a mainly quiet piece which nevertheless is full of energy. Notice the perfect synchronization between the musicians. It is always rewarding to see how the musicians communicate on their field of expertise and what beautiful results they can achieve. Words won’t be enough to fully describe the beauty of the music, or maybe they would do just that: describe the music, but never sound like the music itself. Once again we find out that music is a communication channel of its own, independent from the spoken languages.
The Arne Jansen Trio Performing On the Shore
In this video clip you can see and listen to the Arne Jansen Trio performing the tune On the Shore live on stage. Arne Jansen plays the electric guitar, Eva Kruse is playing the double bass and Eric Schaefer is performing on drums. The song is in a quiet mood with an melancholic feel. Just as the title says, it could be a day on the shore, have the ocean in front of you, get calm with the huge amount of water and the endless rolling waves, maybe some birds flying in the air, a boat or two passing by, just a day On the Shore.
It is remarkable how these great musicians can play such a quiet piece, most listeners won’t appreciate their skills, everybody is expecting them to show what they can do.
However, musicality or musical talent certainly doesn’t have much to do with virtuousity, virtuousity sometimes even kills musicality just because the musician has to perform extra fast runs on his instruments, play them smoothly and don’t make any ‘mistakes’, don’t leave out notes, play wrong notes or anything that could be interpreted as evidence of his lack of talent. Many times, these fast parts don’t sound like music and the performers seem to be like secretaries who can type real fast, regardless of the content they are writing.
Bass Player Jaco Pastorious and Guitar Player John Scofield Performing The Chicken
This video shows two of the most important jazz musicians playing together in a studio session: we are talking about the legendary funky bass player Jaco Pastorious and guitar monster John Scofield. As for bass players there are musicians like Percy Jones, Linley Marthe, Mark King, Jeff Berlin, Ralphe Armstrong or Hadrien Feraud, to mention just a few. However, Jaco Pastorious is in my opinion the funkiest bass player, specially because of his slappy style which is now being copied by many younger bass players.
In this studio session John Scofield and Jaco Pastorious count with the drums of Kenwood Dennard. It is astounding how well Jaco’s bass lines go together with the bass drum, everything is in the pocket!
Unfortunately Jaco Pastorious was killed violently short time after this recording.
We also recommend to check for videos with Jaco Pastorious together with the jazz rock band Weather Report where he played most of his best performances.
In this video, Jaco is playing a bass with frets while in many other recordings he uses a fretless bass and produces some excellent solos with it. Here Jaco is playing mainly as part of the rhythm section which is his usual concept for the bass player while other ones consider the bass as an instrument as any other conventional solo instrument.
Ben Webster Performing the Song Perdido along with the Oscar Peterson Trio
Watch this video clip with the great tenor saxophone player Ben Webster improvising over the chord changes of the song Perdido. Some time ago, we have posted the same song performed by another jazz legend: Sarah Vaughan, go and listen to this version too, then compare and try to find out who you like better.
The group Ben Webster is playing with here is the Oscar Peterson Trio.
Ben Webster was born in Kansas City, Missouri. He started playing the saxophone in the early 20s of the past century and learned a lot from the inmortal Coleman Hawkins. Ben Webster has played with the bands and groups of Bennie Moten, Cab Calloway, Fletcher Henderson, and many others. Ben Webster’s favourite pieces are the jazz ballads, despite his excellent performances with the Duke Ellington Orchestra where he frequently performed up-tempo compositions with great improvisations. Ben Webster passed away in 1973.
As always when we present an important tenor saxophone jazz player, we invite you to participate in our poll and vote about the most important tenor sax jazz musician.
Dave Weckl, Vinnie Colaiutta and Steve Gadd drumming together
Watch world class drummers Dave Weckl, Vinnie Colaiuta and Steve Gadd drumming together on a drummerworld gig. It’s really hard to say one of them is better than the others, it’s best to recognize each drummers personal style of playing the drums and treating their drumset and consider it as unique as any of the others too.
Competitions might be entertaining but collaboration is a much more productive way of living. In fact, we’re sure that the 3 drummers who are playing here together are not really competing, that’s only a mediatic distortion of the importance of the individualism and the collective production.
Yeah, I know, it’s a lot of talking … so jst listen to the sound of these drumsets played by excellent drummers, theytrade bars and play beautifully together.
At the end of the year we will open up our poll for the best drummer ever. We hope you will participate in making this poll’s results relevant and representative for our reader’s. At this time the poll regarding tenor sax players is still open, so we invite you to participate in the POLL: WHO IS THE BEST TENOR SAXOPHONE PLAYER.
For the drummers among our readers we want to tell you that we are working hard to get a good collection of drum music in all genres, styles and from many regions of the world. If you want to suggest a poll please feel free to contact us. We will happily consider it in our next polls to be published once or twice monthly.
Charles Mingus Hazel Scott ‘A Foggy Day’
Watch this video clip with early Charlie Mingus playing the accoustic bass in the trio of femal singer, piano player and band leader Hazel Scott. In this cover version of the jazz standard ‘A Foggy Day’ Charles Mingus plays a straight forward walking bass. These were the beginning days of the great bass player who soon formed his own group and entered the field of free jazz. Charles Mingus has formed a lot of goups ranging from trios and quartets to big band orchestras. This video here is more of a documental but you still can enjoy the music. This seems to be recorded at a tv studio set.
Music and Video Guide 