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Cindy Blackman Santana leads a new class of cross-genre musicians
7/2/2012 |
It's generally regarded as the dirty little secret, the memento best kept hidden beneath the bed and never discussed.
Fusion -- the accepted whittled-down descriptive for the term jazz-rock-fusion -- has been a controversial element of popular music and jazz alike since it first started rearing its head in the later 1960s. "True" jazz fans found it abhorrent, a "dumbing down" of the harmonically dense and improvisationally challenging music they so adored. "Rock" fans, at least some of them, found it too busy, a distraction from the supposedly street-level, authentic song format of pop and rock 'n' roll. Read the full article here
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Live Review: a musical journey down Spectrum Road
6/29/2012 |
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Live Review: a musical journey down Spectrum Road
by Jonathan Sidelman Spectrum Road @ Dimitrious Jazz Alley, Sunday, June 24th One of the most exciting aspects of any
concert experience is to arrive and be immediately struck by the
atmosphere in the room before the music begins. By the time Spectrum Road took flight on what would be their fourth and final performance at Dimitriou’s Jazz Alley,
the energy coming from the stage had already succeeded in converting
the building into a kind of vessel designed for time travel, and
cruising at a very high altitude indeed. The richness of four unique
and disparate musical personalities could be detected well ahead of
their introduction, as evidenced by an array of customized vintage and
modern equipment. The musical offering to follow, in celebration of the
late composer and drumming legend Tony Williams,
manifested as an unbroken stream of colors that unfolded vividly with
every piece. The entire set was played almost without interruption, and
invited the perspective of observing a process at its highest
potential. Click link to read full article here
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Spectrum Road in Jazz Times
6/19/2012 |
Spectrum Road is not the first group to pay homage to Tony
Williams’ band Lifetime—Trio Beyond, with Jack DeJohnette, Larry
Goldings and John Scofield, put out the excellent Saudades in
2006—but it may be the rowdiest. This all-star quartet (named for a
Lifetime song) is made up of four folks who keep one foot in jazz and
one in rock: Cream bassist Jack Bruce, who actually played with Williams
in Lifetime; guitarist Vernon Reid, an improviser who became a rock
star as part of Living Colour; keyboardist John Medeski of Medeski
Martin & Wood; and Cindy Blackman Santana, a jazz drummer who backed
Lenny Kravitz for a decade and released a Williams homage under her own
name in 2010. Their self-titled album is very often raucous and loud:
Reid, sounding a lot like his hero (and Lifetime vet) John McLaughlin,
shreds throughout; Blackman Santana batters her skins and cymbals
restlessly; Medeski creates giant walls of sound; and Bruce—well,
Bruce’s contributions might blow out your speakers.
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Guitar Player: Spectrum Road SF Review
6/19/2012 |
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The Spectrum Road show at the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco on June 16 was intense. Jack Bruce, Vernon Reid, John Medeski, and Cindy Blackman-Santana channeled something extraordinarily large, loud, dark, and beautiful—and even if Medeski hadn't been playing a Mellotron—which he was—it would still have been one of the heaviest progressive rock performances I've ever seen (the band's Tony Williams tribute origins notwithstanding).
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Spectrum Road in Variety
6/19/2012 |
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Those who grouse about the lack of progressive jazz at the Playboy Jazz Festival got their long-sought reward at the end of a long day on Sunday night when Spectrum Road took the stage. Others fled en masse within the first five minutes, admittedly a not-unusual exodus for the last act on the festival's closing day. But they missed the most stimulating performance by far of Day Two -- and this from an all-star quartet that was merely doing a full-tilt revival of a branch of jazz that was invented over 40 years ago.
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Review of Santana show at Hollywood Bowl
10/2/2011 |
Solos were in abundance, with each player getting a chance to throw down
skills, but Santana’s wife, drummer Cindy Blackman, was the standout
among standouts, at one point only using her right hand..
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Cindy & Carlos make surprise Guest appearance at The Sleeping Lady in Fairfax, CA
9/22/2011 |
On Thursday, Sept. 22, music lovers at The Sleeping Lady got a surprising treat: a visit and set from Carlos & Cindy. "The room was already packed and it was a hot night, but before long the word was out and people poured down town and into the street outside the Sleeping Lady," They jammed on a Sonny Sharrock song with Danny Click. Check here for a very raw video of the performance.
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