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Take Five with Pianist Jon Gold
by AAJ Staff
Meet Jon Gold Jon's story begins in the San Francisco Bay Area. Jon's brother (Jay Gold) was an avid music fan who introduced Jon, as a child, to Delta blues, then r&b, and later jazz. Jon's brother Jay was a producer for Mushroom Records, the label for the pop group Heart. Jon started playing slide blues guitar but early on took up piano. One of his first big opportunities was to perform with Dizzy Gillespie for a special ...
Continue ReadingJon Gold: Things Are Looking Up
by Jack Bowers
On Things Are Looking Up, California-bred pianist and composer Jon Gold uses a dozen able musicians in groups of various sizes from duo to quintet to add color and spice to his generally harmonic and accessible post-bop themes. Four of these themes are tributes to those who have influenced Gold musically or personally, and the album opens with one: a quintet reading of the “For Rudy van Gelder," with sometimes strident solos by tenor saxophonist Kevon Scott and ...
Continue ReadingJon Gold: Bossa of Possibility
by Jerry D'Souza
Keyboardist Jon Gold continues where he left off with Brazil Confidential (Blujazz Records, 2011) and his love for Brazilian and Latin jazz. He brings back several of the musicians from that date to help essay 12 new compositions which ease into terrain that goes beyond his root calling. He adds to the mood of the music by blending the musicians into the compositions, a shift of balance that adds fire and spit or ushers in the cool air that entice ...
Continue ReadingJon Gold: Brazil Confidential
by Jerry D'Souza
Jon Gold is a fluid and lyrical pianist with a deft approach, who lets his ideas flow with facile ease. His artistry is not surprising, given that his early influences were classical composers like Ravel, as well as jazz pianists Oscar Peterson and McCoy Tyner. He was entranced enough by Tyner to learn almost all of his solos note-for-note, but it is in Brazilian music that Gold finds his muse, the first link to that genre coming when he heard ...
Continue ReadingJon Gold: Brazil Confidential
by Raul d'Gama Rose
Jon Gold's Brazil Confidential is unique. It is an album of music that shows just how much the pianist and composer has internalized the Brazilian experience and what that can do for authenticity when it comes to an American musician writing in a Brazilian style. It may be true that the experience is largely urban, but that should not take away from the achievement of this album. Perhaps the true breakthrough is in the unabashed spirituality that is fused into ...
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