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Denny Zeitlin: Panoply
by Dan McClenaghan
There was a Steinway in the Zeitlin household in the outskirts of Chicago in the early 1940s. During this time Denny Zeitlin would find his way to the piano playing parental laps and sit at the keyboard, where he, he says: “I would put my little hands on their hands and go along for the ride...and I was just very intrigued by the entire panoply of sounds that were possible with that instrument." (from the 2010 AAJ interview with the ...
Continue ReadingDenny Zeitlin: Panoply
by Pierre Giroux
Denny Zeitlin's Panoply is a diverse array collection of unreleased performances comprising solo piano recordings at the Piedmont Piano Company in Oakland, California, trio sessions with bassist Buster Williams and drummer Matt Wilson captured at Mezzrow Jazz Club in New York City, and duo pieces with drummer/percussionist George Marsh collected over a decade of home recordings at Zeitlin's Double Helix Studio. The album opens with a trio performance of George Gershwin's “I Was Doing All Right." ...
Continue ReadingDenny Zeitlin: Crazy Rhythm: Exploring George Gershwin
by Dan McClenaghan
Denny Zeitlin's jazz career began when he sat in as the featured pianist on flutist Jeremy Steig's Flute Fever (Columbia Records, 1964). He followed this up with his debut as a leader on Columbia Records' 1964 album Cathexis. While maintaining another successful career as a psychiatrist and college professor, he released more than a dozen albums over the next quarter century, most of them acoustic piano sets, plus a few experimental electronic outings, along with a groundbreaking electro/orchestral soundtrack to ...
Continue ReadingDenny Zeitlin & George Marsh: Telepathy: Duo Electro-Acoustic Improvisations
by Dan McClenaghan
Pianist Denny Zeitlin's recording career began with his contribution to flutist Jeremy Steig's 1963 album Flute Fever (Columbia Records). Then Zeitlin struck out on his own, creating over five-plus decades worth of record releases on Columbia Records, Decca/ECM, Windham Hill, MaxJazz (and more) before shifting into overdrive when he connected with Sunnyside Records in 2009, on In Concert with Buster Williams and Matt Wilson. Since that 2009 debut with the label, the Sunnyside relationship has resulted in thirteen releases comprising ...
Continue ReadingDenny Zeitlin: Live at Mezzrow
by Dan McClenaghan
Pianist Denny Zeitlin appeared on his first recording in 1963, flautist Jeremy Steigs' Flute Fever (Columbia Records). He was in his third year at Johns Hopkins Medical School at the time, on a path to dual careers in psychiatry and eventually the teaching of that profession—vocations he continues with to this day. Add a third career, jazz pianist. And Denny Zeitlin doesn't dabble. His music is a third career, equal in personal importance to his more conventional occupations. ...
Continue ReadingDenny Zeitlin: Live at Mezzrow
by Dan Bilawsky
Coming up on two decades of creative engagement and evolution, pianist Denny Zeitlin's group with bassist Buster Williams and drummer Matt Wilson remains one of the most bracing, sophisticated and creatively satisfying trios on the scene. In the best of times, a set like this, recorded live at Spike Wilner's New York piano room Mezzrow, can serve as a reminder of the virtues of camaraderie, depth of feeling, design strength and the art of living in the moment. Arriving at ...
Continue ReadingDenny Zeitlin: Remembering Miles
by Dan McClenaghan
Pianist Denny Zeitlin, pushing hard ahead in an extraordinary recording career that began in 1963 with a sideman job on Jeremy Steig's Flute Fever (Columbia Records), has settled artistically, fifty years on, into a pair welcoming homes: Sunnyside Records, for whom he has recorded ten superb albums, beginning with 2009's In Concert Featuring Buster Williams and Matt Wilson, and Oakland, California's Piedmont Piano Company, where he has taken up residence in recent years to present solo piano recitals focusing on ...
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