Like few musicians in the history of music, Kenny Wheeler has been able to make his music a trademark. An approach to his instrument, the trumpet that has marked artistic events for generations of musicians. A sound that transfixes today as it did yesterday and touches whoever comes into contact with this artist. But Kenny Wheeler is more than that. Music at it's purest, an instrumentalist but also as a composer and arranger. And the Long Waiting is a precious gem inside the corpus of the trumpeter's discography. After having measured his composition for string quartet with the album Other People, Wheeler raises the stakes by facing a much larger format: The big band. The result is amazing, unique. A modern writing that embellishes the history of the jazz orchestra. It seems simple, listening to this work with particular attention to the melody, but in Wheeler's themes there is a compositional complexity that only a great craftsman of music is able to construct.
Mike Wheeler Band - CD - "TURN UP" - Delmark Records - Mike Wheeler: "Mike Wheeler has been a fixture on the Chicago blues scene for almost 30 years and his eloquent Delmark debut. Faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. Look up on the stage. It's SuperMike, who can change the course of mighty rivers, bend steel strings with his bare hands, and who, disguised in Chicago sports caps as mild-mannered average guy, fights a never-ending battle for blues, soul and the true funktified way. In 2012 Delmark released Self Made Man. In his Living Blues magazine review David Whiteis wrote "Wheeler's music virtually explodes with affirmation... Throughout, Wheeler's solos resonate with the joy of exploration and discovery, as well as with emotional power." This new album features 12 new originals including "You Won't Do Right", "Brand New Cadillac" and the burning title track., TURN UP !!
This 1997 recording was James Wheeler's debut as leader. James had played guitar in the bands of Otis Rush (for seven years), B.B. King, O.V. Wright, Billy Boy Arnold, Otis Clay, Mississippi Heat and Willie Kent. "The Chicago native and prolific songwriter exudes a relaxed, knowing authority... simple, grounded, no-nonsense blues from the soulful elder with a milk chocolate voice." - Jazz Times with Billy Flynn, guitar; Ken Saydak, piano; Bob Stroger, bass; Vern Rodgers, drums; Golden "Big" Wheeler, harmonica (on two songs); and guest vocalist Gloria Thompson-Rodgers. Features eleven original compositions and covers of "I'm Just Your Fool" and "Good Morning Little Schoolgirl". (Previously deleted:4/1/06. Original release date:3/24/98)
Mike Wheeler has been playing the blues for almost 30 years and has played with Koko Taylor, Buddy Guy, B.B. King, Shemekia Copeland, Jimmy Johnson, Son Seals, Willie Kent and a who's who of today's Chicago Blues!!. Mike is an extraordinary blues singer, songwriter and guitarist. He wrote most of the material Self Made Man including the title track where he sings "I'm a self made man and I made myself have the blues". Mike is accompanied by his regular group including Brian James, keyboards; Larry Williams, bass; Cleo Cole, drums and special guest Omar Coleman, harmonica on three songs. Others songs include "Get Your Mind Right", "Movin' Forward", "I Don't like It Like That", "Here I Am".
Blues guitarist first started his own band way back in 1963, backing many greats as they passed through Chicago, inc. Al Green, Johnny Taylor, Etta James & others - this, his 2nd Delmark album, further establishes him as a tasteful & talented bandleader & recording artist.
Kenny Wheeler is among the most lyrically commanding yet daring of modern trumpeters. There's a palpable ease of execution, and a poignant human quality, to his distinctive timbre, as on the title tune where his fluttering descents into the lower register, the cracked yet powerful vocal inflections, and the sudden emission of high harmonics suggest a whistling column of air slowly leaking from a balloon. And from the moody Spanish tinge of "Present Past" to the raga-ish Nordic gravity of "Unti," alto player Lee Konitz matches Wheeler's lyric ease with a singing sound and rhythmic buoyancy all his own.
Gnu High was trumpeter/flugelhornist Kenny Wheeler's first for ECM, and Keith Jarrett's last session as a sideman: both deliver astonishing improvisations in a highly interactive quartet with Holland and DeJohnette, and Wheeler's writing is captivating. Luminessence Series ECM's new audiophile vinyl reissue series, is a kaleidoscope, shedding light on the jewels of the label's deep catalogue in elegant, high-quality editions. The hallmarks of the series: original and evocative music, imaginatively played and sensitively produced. The recordings underline the scope and variety of ECM's world of sound and the LPs are presented in different formats.
