(Twenty-eighth of a series) On a good night, there’s a particular kind of hush that falls over a small jazz room right before a solo begins—the clink of glasses pausing, the low hum of conversation dropping to nothing, every ear angling toward the stage. It’s in that silence that saxophonist Dix Lucero does his clearest...
Tag: saxophonist
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Portraits in Jazz: Alvin Cornista’s different worlds
(Third of a series) Most everything can be turned into a story if one knows how. Or a song, if we ask tenor saxophonist Alvin Cornista, whose soon-to-be-released part 1 (simply called Manila) of a double album (part 2, titled 7,000 Islands, drops next year) that contains 15 tunes written over a 2-week stretch in...
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Portraits in Jazz: Ronald Tomas, homeland and music
Second of a series “I just want to play,” says Ronald Tomas, band leader, arranger, composer, singer, and saxophonist—arguably one of the busiest musicians today who cross over jazz, R&B/ funk/rock/soul, and pop jazz stages with enviable ease, the sort for whom music is air and water. Ronald grew up in Pangasinan swaddled by music:...