Although Adam made waves musically, he only recorded his first debut album in , Free at First, which won him the SAMA for best contemporary album. This created an aspiration to work with local artists, and not long after winning, he worked with numerous South African artists to record Mzansi which was released in Having made notable success with an instrument that falls under the less prominent of jazz instruments, Adam brings a unique South African style to the harmonica as he incorporates it in his music.
Overview Received his first harmonica at the age of The Manhattan Brothers appeared and performed at the Wembley Concert in celebrating the release of Nelson Mandela in Toured with Martha Reeves and the Vandellas in Toured with Jimmy Whiterspoon in Come and here some fascinating anecotes about his harmonica experiences working with everyone from the Welsh National Opera to Sting, the Eurythmics and Joe Zawinul.
The Adam Glasser Quintet This summer Adam continues his trademark tradition of exciting collaborations by presenting two new lineups this summer - both include a tribute to the late Hugh Masekela whom Glasser has accompanied on piano several times over many years.
Byron Wallen incl. Sunday 12th August Harmonica Jazz: Toots Thielemans and Beyond Adam Glasser brings the chromatic harmonica to the foreground leading a quartet with Rob Luft, Daisy George and Corrie Dick through a selection of jazz compositions associated with the legendary Toots Thielemans as well as contemporary jazz and latin standards not normally associated with the mouth organ.
Share on Facebook Share. Share on Twitter Tweet. Pin to Pinterest Pin. With Free at First, his debut album as a leader, Glasser seeks to give this underappreciated instrument a well-deserved moment in the sun. Aided by Robin Aspland's elegantly supportive piano, and by a fine ensemble including Tristan Mailliot on drums, and Steve Watts and Andy Hamill on bass, and featuring vocalist Anita Wardell's virtuosic scat on 'Little Melonae', Glasser succeeds mightily at this first task of birthing practically a new voice in jazz.
But there is another dimension to this record, the South African dimension, which tugs relentlessly at the listener's psyche. Free at Firstis also the work of a performer who knows and cherishes "that South African crying sound" - as Glasser himself describes it - "that you hear in the great saxophonists like Barney Rachabane and Kippie Moeketsi, and in trumpeters and other soloists. The album daringly balances, for instance, David Serame's spoken-word performances on 'The Low Six' and 'African Jazz and Variety' set within Glasser's understated township piano envelope or the show-tune treacle of 'Quickly in Love' against the percussive duet 'Kort Street' with Glasser on pounding acoustic piano and Mailliot on South African-inflected drums or Aspland's transporting electric piano on 'Part of a Whole'.
As a young musician growing up in Johannesburg, and coming to musical maturity in London, Glasser exulted in the raucous township pop-jazz sound of the 70's, exemplified by such songs as Rachabane's 'Tegeni' and 'Mafuta', and pianist Tete Mambisa's 'Stay Cool', and by the so-called 'sax jive' of players like Thomas Phale and David Thekwane.
More influential on Glasser than anyone he says were saxophonist Bra Sello and a group called The Drive, whose saxophonist, Henry Sithole, died in an automobile accident at the height of their popularity.
Glasser was later the architect of the renaissance in London and eventually of the post-apartheid South African homecoming of the iconic Manhattan Brothers vocal group, led by Joe Mogotsi. Their association yielded both a string of memorable live performances abroad and a sadly unheralded South African release of their brilliant comeback recording, Inyembezi, produced by Glasser in Along the way, Glasser became an intimate of Joe Zawinul's Glasser and Aspland's 'Remembrance', the concluding piece on Free at First, is a remembrance of Zawinul and he served as the pianist in various 'London township' ensembles fronted by the late alto saxophonist Dudu Pukwana and featuring their wonderful female vocal cohort Pinise Saul, who appears with brio on Free at First on 'Mjo' a tribute to the late Churchill Jolobe, the irrepressible drummer in those groups.
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