Tag Archives: John Coltrane

DOMi and JD Beck

While we are still mourning the passing of jazz innovator Chick Corea, it is awfully reassuring to see a new generation of young musicians dedicated to keeping jazz – and the chops that go with it – alive. French keyboardist Domitille Degalle, stage name DOMi, and Texas drummer JD Beck are both in the prodigy vein of musicians – she is now 21, he 17. Their paths crossed a few years ago, and they have been collaborating ever since. Thanks for the heads up on these two, Barry!

Here are a couple of videos from a set of studio duets they performed last year. The second is their renamed riff on the John Coltrane classic, “Giant Steps”.

This performance features JD, with DOMi playing as part of Ghost-Note, a collaborative of musicians worthy of their own post. Learn more here until I get around to that. Fast forward to about 1:20 if you want to bypass the chatter.

Netflix and Cool

My personal style of Netflix binging is working my way through its catalog of music documentaries.  Recently I watched 2019’s “Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool”.   It’s an interesting trip through the entire arc of his career, and I highly recommend it.

I’m among those who consider Davis’ 1959 Kind of Blue one of the greatest albums ever (Rolling Stone slots it in at #12, two ticks above Abbey Road).  Its consistent sales over many decades have also made it the best selling jazz album of all time.   In addition to being a defining work for Miles, the group that recorded it included sax players John Coltrane and Cannonball Adderley, pianists Bill Evans and Wynton Kelly, drummer Jimmy Cobb, and bassist Paul Chambers.  Davis and Coltrane were the gray hair in the group at age 33.

Here’s the second track from Kind of Blue, and please listen to the rest of the album when you have some time.

A few weeks after the sessions for Kind of Blue ended in April 1959, John Coltrane began to record his masterpiece Giant Steps, drawing on Cobb, Chambers and Kelly to help out.   While most of the album features the up tempo compositions Coltrane became known for, “Naima” was a dreamy departure that became a jazz standard.

Just after Cannonball Adderley walked out of the Kind of Blue sessions, he began recording Them Dirty Blues, which featured “Jeannine”.