Friday, December 2, 2011

Harold O'Neal's Artistic Autonomy


As agonizingly difficult and ultimately unproductive discussions about the meaning of jazz in 2011 hold sway at Plastic Sax and elsewhere, Harold O'Neal continues to epitomize the limitless range of an artistically autonomous musician. The Kansas City native former resident of Kansas City combines classical romanticism with Art Tatum-influenced jazz on his new solo piano album Marvelous Fantasy. O'Neal has also spend much of the year touring with underground hip hop star Murs. (Here's a bit of live footage.) Studio 360 offers a new 17-minute interview with O'Neal. (Tip on the Studio 360 feature via my friend E.G.'s Facebook status.)

2 comments:

Russell Thorpe said...

Murs is the shit. Happy, did you ever hear the Vijay Iyer/Mike Ladd collaboration? One of them there hip-hop-jazz concept thingies that is remarkable complete and whole. Along with El-P's album on thirsty ear from a couple years back. Really though, anything from the Definitive Jux stable is worth checking out.

Happy In Bag said...

Iyer/Ladd's In What Language project is a little too, um... "arty," for me, Phono. This, however, delights me.