M@'s EPK & Press Propaganda —Reviews
Arts & Crafts Review - Green Mill, Chicago
Posted: Sat, May 24, 2008
On Saturday night, I am pretty sure that I heard a drumset sing. At least, that’s the only way that I can think of describing it. I clearly heard notes coaxed from toms, a snare drum handled with extraordinary subtlety, and cymbal work that was simply masterful, energetic and busy but not overbearing. This melodic approach was in no way gimmicky, it struck me as a manifestation of understanding the real voice of the instrument.
On Saturday night, I was at the Green Mill. …
Time for Arts and Crafts: Matt Wilson at the Jazz Bakery, May 2-6
Posted: Tue, May 01, 2007
Written by Andrea Canter, Contributing Editor
Matt Wilson has been collecting more than percussion instruments: His accolades include four consecutive titles as DownBeat critics’ “rising star” drummer”; “Best New Artist” by the New York Jazz Critics Circle; winner of the 2004 Modern Drummers reader’s poll; nomination as 2004 and 2006 Jazz Drummer of the Year by the Jazz Journalists Association. Similar accolades have been heaped upon his ensembles, the Matt Wilson Quartet and his other foursome, Arts and Crafts. Matt Wilson’s Arts and Crafts is currently touring in support …
The New Low Down Review of Arts and Crafts
Posted: Sun, Apr 22, 2007
By: The New Low Down
22 April 2007
Show: Matt Wilson’s Arts and Crafts
Friday, April 20, 2007 @ The Blue Room
Despite the cover charge and bar tab, it felt more like a house party.
Matt Wilson’s Arts & Crafts played three solid sets of top-shelf jazz last Friday at the Blue Room. In the two long breaks in between, the band milled among the tables glad-handing the well-wishers. Arts & Crafts trumpeter Terrell Stafford chatted with local pianist and singer Pamela Baskin-Watson. Local …
Accentuate the Positive
Posted: Wed, Feb 14, 2007
From Downbeat Magazine, by Michael Jackson. February 2007
Matt Wilson Offers Humor, Levity and Stellar Drum Chops as a Bandleader and Sideman
Whenever Matt Wilson comes through Chicago, one of his first ports of call is Steve Maxwell Pro Percussion and Jazz Workshop on Michigan Avenue. Not that he’s a drum tech-head, despite various equipment endorsements. Wilson just loves being around all of the shop’s vintage kits, day dreaming about Rufus “Speedy” Jones backing Duke Ellington behind his twin bass Slingerland setup, for example. He tries out a few vintage K Zildjian cymbals and generally makes himself …
onefinalnote.com Review of Wake Up!
Posted: Mon, Mar 28, 2005
Matt Wilson continues his unique streak of drummer-led albums with Wake Up! (To What’s Happening), a set that touches upon Cuban carnival, swinging post-bop, and swirling psychedelica. He is assisted admirably by Larry Goldings on piano and organ, Terell Stafford on trumpet and flugelhorn, Dennis Irwin on bass and clarinet, and guest vocalist Curtis Stigers who makes his presence felt mightily on the Tony Williams penned “There Comes a Time”.
Unique among drummer-leaders, Wilson is a finesse player, quiet and understated, giving plenty of room to his fellow bandmates. No …
Matt Wilson: Connecting with the People
Posted: Thu, Feb 10, 2005
Two sticks beat incessantly on a snare and a tom while a third rests snuggly in Matt Wilson’s armpit. Poised on his steed of a stool, arched foot tapping methodically on the high-hat pedal, the bespectacled, mock turtleneck wearing, just-turned-forty-year-old resembles a Revolutionary War hero. In reality he’s a New York jazz musician on stage at Sweet Rhythm with pianist Frank Kimbraugh and bassist Ben Allison, having so much fun that after each tune he lets out a full-throttled guffaw.
Wake Up! (To What’s Happening), the new album with his …
Matt Wilson: Beyond Category
Posted: Thu, Mar 27, 2003
The world thrives on order and the type of categorization that is as much a part of everyday life as breathing. Single or married, democrat or republican, each one of us can be pigeonholed into general and then more specific categories. Music is certainly no different, as anyone can tell you if they’ve found themselves in a store struggling to locate a disc of percussive beats from the Ghanawan musicians of Africa or of the klezmer strains of Mickey Katz. The antithesis of this kind of activity, jazz drummer Matt Wilson- and one even hesitates to call him just a jazz …
jazzweekly.com Review of Humidity
Posted: Fri, May 17, 2002
By Ken Waxman
After a while, it’s embarrassing to keep repeating it, but Matt Wilson has emerged as one of the most accomplished—if not the most accomplished—inside/outside drummer of the 21st century.
Wilson, whose inside credentials include membership in mainstream pianist Bill Mays’ trio, and whose outside work includes being a part of the experimental Jazz Composers’ Collective, demonstrates once again on his own discs that he can switch effortlessly from the cerebral to the demonstrative. Humidity provides 12 sizzling examples of this.
Appropriately enough, he begins this CD with a …
Ken Waxman Review of Arts & Crafts
Posted: Fri, Jun 01, 2001
By Ken Waxman
Neo cons may pontificate as much as they want about their narrow definition of “true jazz”, but an unabashed mainstream session like this one easily shows that so-called avant garde sounds long ago became part of the common vocabulary of most improvised musicians.
Among the tunes you’ll find nestled on this session among ones by George Gershwin and Bud Powell, and including a bossa nova and a Welsh folk song, is a Rahsaan Roland Kirk swinger, an Ornette Coleman gospel-blues rocker, and the leader’s disconsolate tribute to the late Art …
1999 All About Jazz Interview
Posted: Fri, Oct 01, 1999
The old saying you can take the boy out of the country, but you cant take the country out of the boy has generally meant that someone raised in a rural setting will inevitably reveal his or her lack of sophistication when placed in a refined metropolitan environment.
Of course, if being a nice guy and making oneself readily accessible to aspiring musicians when approached for advice or instruction is indicative of a lack of breeding or social grace, then drummer/composer Matt Wilson is, without question, one raw and …
