{"id":3473,"date":"2014-01-01T22:21:10","date_gmt":"2014-01-01T22:21:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jazzusa.com\/the-rippingtons-topaz\/"},"modified":"2011-01-01T22:21:10","modified_gmt":"2011-01-01T22:21:10","slug":"the-rippingtons-topaz","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jazzusa.com\/?p=3473","title":{"rendered":"The Rippingtons &#8211; Topaz"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>  \t<font face=\"Verdana, Helvetica\" size=\"2\" style=\"font-face:verdana; font-size:10pt\">  <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/jazzusa.com\/storypix\/topaz.jpg\" width=\"100\" height=\"100\" alt=\"The Rippingtons - Topaz\" border=\"0\" align=\"Right\"\/><\/font><font color=\"blue\" face=\"Verdana, Helvetica\" size=\"4\">The Rippingtons<\/font><br \/><font color=\"blue\" face=\"Verdana, Helvetica\" size=\"2\" style=\"font-face:verdana; font-size:10pt\"><b>Topaz<\/b><\/font><br \/><font face=\"Verdana, Helvetica\" size=\"2\" style=\"font-face:verdana; font-size:10pt\"><\/font><font face=\"Verdana, Helvetica\" color=\"#000000\" size=\"1\"> by Raymond Redmond<\/font><font face=\"Verdana\" size=\"2\" color=\"#000000\"> <\/font><\/p>\n<p>  After the Rippington&#8217;s last release <i>Black Diamond<\/i> I began to believe that there was some life still some life left in this   smooth jazz legend. After turning out a string of releases that went from Good to OK to Ok to sort-of-Ok, <i>Black Diamond<\/i> showed some  of the creative spark that made the Rippingtons a staple on smooth jazz stations all over the world.<\/p>\n<p>  With their newest Windham Hill release, <i>Topaz<\/i>, the Rippingtons have gone back to OK.  The title song, <i>Topaz<\/i>, is classic Russ Freeman. Heavy on the guitar and very rhythmic, this and <i>Snakedance<\/i> will  certainly get a lot of new-age airplay. The best tune on the CD is <i>Spirits in the Canyon<\/i>, due largely to the  fine alto work of guest saxophonist Paul Taylor.<\/p>\n<p>The remainder of the CD will surely appeal to Rippingtons fans, but falls  a little short of groundbreaking. Over the years the Rippingtons has included some of the  best performers in the smooth-jazz world, including David Benoit, Gregg Karukas, Dave Koz, Kenny G and others.   This variety of ensembles has created a lot of good combinations, but sometime this lack of consistency results   in releases that are merely a cast of good musicians playing with Russ Freeman.              <center>      <?php require($DOCUMENT_ROOT . \"_footer.htm\");   ??><\/center><\/body><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The RippingtonsTopaz by Raymond Redmond After the Rippington&#8217;s last release<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3473","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jazzusa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3473","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jazzusa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jazzusa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jazzusa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jazzusa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3473"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jazzusa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3473\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jazzusa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3473"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jazzusa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3473"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jazzusa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3473"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}