Jim Hall

Latest Articles

Swing, etc.

10 must-hear jazz discs
The music may suffer plenty of economic slings and arrows these days, but it's still full of thrills galore. As usual, it's looking outside of its orthodoxy for invigorating ideas. Here are titles you truly need.
By JIM MACNIE | December 29, 2009

Street rhythm

Florencia Gonzalez gets ugly . Plus, Dave Holland is sitting pretty.
In the city where Florencia Gonzalez grew up — the Uruguayan capital of Montevideo — every neighborhood has its own candombe group. These are drum outfits that might meet on a Sunday afternoon, a Wednesday night, or particular holidays, depending on neighborhood tradition.
By JON GARELICK | August 25, 2009

Comic thunder

The Theater Project visits Niagara Falls
Niagara Falls is a great, looming presence in David Lindsay-Abaire's Wonder of the World , and the Theater Project delivers it, in the powerful white-noise rush of its crash, in ethereal shifting mists and haunting glacial-blue light, and in a rise of four tiered platforms hung with translucent, back-lit fringe.
By MEGAN GRUMBLING | July 22, 2009

Interview: Steve Swallow on the Gary Burton Quartet

An interview with Steve Swallow
DO YOU REMEMBER EXACTLY HOW YOU GUYS FIRST GOT TOGETHER? I have a memory. I tend to distrust them, but my recollection is that I met Gary when he called me up and asked me if I would consider playing in Stan Getz's band, which he was already in.
By JON GARELICK | June 30, 2009

Meet the Beatles!

The Gary Burton Quartet remembers its roots
Swallow says that when he first picked up an electric bass, "My immediate impression was: 'Oh, shit! I'm in deep trouble here!' "
By JON GARELICK | June 17, 2009

Streaming

Bad Touch's Magic flow; plus Patricia Barber
It's standard operating procedure these days for young jazz bands to mix the free and the formal.
By JON GARELICK | February 27, 2009

Avanti!

Garrison's Fewell's journey out
By the time guitarist Garrison Fewell made his first record as a leader, in the early '90s, he was nearly 40 years old, and the sound he displayed on his debut, A Blue Deeper Than Blue , was ripe.
By JON GARELICK | February 06, 2009