Reviews that mention Noah Howard
April 6, 2013
Live at Glenn Miller Café
JaZt Tapes CD-030
By Ken Waxman
More than a typical nightclub set in retrospect, the untitled tracks which make up this passionate and high-quality performance from 2000 also serves as an inadvertent retrospective of saxophonist Noah Howard’s long career.
New Orleans-born Howard (1943-2010), was a second wave New Thing player, who moved to Europe in the early ‘70s initially working with fellow expatriates like saxophonist Frank Wright and pianist Bobby Few, and then, following his move to Belgium in the early ‘80s, after time in Africa, gigging with jazzers from everywhere. His collaborators included Europeans such as Dutch drummer Han Bennink and French pianist François Tusque plus South African bassist Johnny Dyani. MORE
August 6, 2012
Music in My Soul
Noah Howard (Buddy’s Knife)
By Ken Waxman
Metaphorically, alto saxophonist Noah Howard’s musical life mirrored the history of jazz. Born April 6, 1943 in New Orleans, the music’s purported cradle, before his death on Sept. 3, 2010 in Belgium, Howard had travelled to San Francisco and New York, recorded for small labels like ESP-Disk, expatriated overseas, toured Europe, Africa and India, while developing ties with emerging local players. Completed just days before his death from a cerebral hemorrhage, Music in My Soul is written in the artless but competent prose of a constantly working musician with some haziness in chronology, spelling and details. MORE
June 18, 2001
Red Star
Boxholder BXH 014
Besides the music, one of the most notable aspects of this 1977 reissue is that it puts to rest the common prevarication that hostility existed between the so-called New Thing players and earlier jazz stylists.
Max Roach's duets with either Cecil Taylor or Anthony Braxton later in that decade and Philly Joe Jones work with Archie Shepp in 1969 were some examples of how untrue that rumor was. In addition, this little-known quintet date should bury the idea for all time.
With no apparent ideological fissure, the man credited with having "invented" bop drumming -- Kenny Clarke -- plays in tandem with two representatives of the avant garde -- alto saxophonist Noah Howard and pianist Bobby Few -- seconded by trumpeter Richard Williams and bassist Guy Pederson. MORE