Rolling Stone interview series Unknown Legends features long-form conversations between senior writer Andy Greene and veteran musicians who have toured and recorded alongside icons for years, if not decades. All are renowned in the business, but some are less well known to the general public. Here, these artists tell their complete stories, giving an up-close look at life on music’s A list. This edition features pianist Alan Pasqua.
When Bob Dylan entered the recording studio in early 2020 to cut his 17-minute epic “Murder Most Foul,” he could have phoned...
When Bob Dylan entered the recording studio in early 2020 to cut his 17-minute epic “Murder Most Foul,” he could have phoned...
- 1/27/2023
- by Andy Greene
- Rollingstone.com
Seth MacFarlane Returns to an Uptempo Take on Big-Band Jazz With New Album, ‘Blue Skies’ (Exclusive)
For Seth MacFarlane, “blue” means less balladic. He’s announcing a new album on the way, “Blue Skies,” and says it marks a return to a more swinging style than the softer approach he employed on his last record.
Out May 20, the seventh album from the “Family Guy” creator and jazz cat will again see him working with a catalog of classics, and again see him working closely with arranger and conductor Andrew Cottee. Still, it’ll mark a turnaround from their previous release.
“I have long been a fan of Andrew Cottee’s supremely artful and buoyant orchestrations,” MacFarlane tells Variety. “So after our last collaboration, ‘Once in A While,’ a ballad-themed record, I really wanted to hear what he could do with an up-tempo album. As always, Andrew did not disappoint. His arrangements of these 14 songs, carefully selected by the two of us, are yet another shining example...
Out May 20, the seventh album from the “Family Guy” creator and jazz cat will again see him working with a catalog of classics, and again see him working closely with arranger and conductor Andrew Cottee. Still, it’ll mark a turnaround from their previous release.
“I have long been a fan of Andrew Cottee’s supremely artful and buoyant orchestrations,” MacFarlane tells Variety. “So after our last collaboration, ‘Once in A While,’ a ballad-themed record, I really wanted to hear what he could do with an up-tempo album. As always, Andrew did not disappoint. His arrangements of these 14 songs, carefully selected by the two of us, are yet another shining example...
- 4/21/2022
- by Chris Willman
- Variety Film + TV
Leave it to director Steven Soderbergh and composer Thomas Newman to go retro ’60s with the music for their fourth collaboration, “Let Them All Talk.”
Accompanying Meryl Streep, Candice Bergen, Dianne Wiest and the rest of Soderbergh’s cast crossing the Atlantic on the Queen Mary 2 is a jazz score that might easily have been penned by John Barry (“The Knack”), Neal Hefti (“The Odd Couple”) or Henry Mancini (“The Pink Panther”).
“Steven genuinely loves that kind of music,” Newman tells Variety. “It was fun to be doing something so different, so outspoken. I’m usually more into the sensuality of how music hits image and can shape and structure things. This was a lot of jazz waltzes.”
Soderbergh contacted Newman while the composer was finishing his “1917” score in London a year ago. They had previously collaborated on “Erin Brockovich,” “Side Effects” and “The Good German,” the last of...
Accompanying Meryl Streep, Candice Bergen, Dianne Wiest and the rest of Soderbergh’s cast crossing the Atlantic on the Queen Mary 2 is a jazz score that might easily have been penned by John Barry (“The Knack”), Neal Hefti (“The Odd Couple”) or Henry Mancini (“The Pink Panther”).
“Steven genuinely loves that kind of music,” Newman tells Variety. “It was fun to be doing something so different, so outspoken. I’m usually more into the sensuality of how music hits image and can shape and structure things. This was a lot of jazz waltzes.”
Soderbergh contacted Newman while the composer was finishing his “1917” score in London a year ago. They had previously collaborated on “Erin Brockovich,” “Side Effects” and “The Good German,” the last of...
- 12/14/2020
- by Jon Burlingame
- Variety Film + TV
Much has been said and written about the receiving and processing of music as a spiritual experience, either in the religious sense, as a way of attempting a connection with God, or in terms of feeling the lift to one’s emotions, the rush of excitement that a great piece of music well-played can offer to the human body and mind. The emotional aspect of musical transportation is pretty easily accessed, on its basest and highest planes. (Just ask any fan of screamo or Yo-Yo Ma.) And there are plenty of folks who will talk to you about how contemporary Christian artists as varied as Keith Green, Becoming Saints and Andre Crouch provide an aural pathway straight to the ear of God. For me, true incorporeal experiences with music are fairly rare. But when I hear the music of late, indisputably great jazz bassist Jaco Pastorius, or see him play,...
- 12/3/2016
- by Dennis Cozzalio
- Trailers from Hell
Jaco Pastorius has been called “The World’s Greatest Bass Player”. He revolutionized the way we think about and play the modern electric bass. On August 12th at the legendary Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles, Vince Mendoza has assembled a who’s who of legendary musicians to celebrate Jaco and his music. I had a chance to chat with Wayne Shorter and Peter Erskine before the big night. The Year of Jaco Peter Erskine recalled meeting Jaco for the first time in-between sets while playing with Maynard Ferguson in 1977. He said to me “Hey man, have fun”. On Pastorius’ recommendation Erskine got the call to join Weather Report in 1978. During a recording session for Weather Report’s 1978 album “Mr. Gone”, Erskine was getting his drum sounds just right for the Wayne Shorter penned “Pinocchio”. Not thinking what he was playing was being recorded or going to be used, he went...
- 8/11/2015
- by Matt Perez-Mora
- Hitfix
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