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Mason Razavi

Jazz guitarist Mason Razavi is an artist with a growing profile in the SF Bay Area and beyond. Based in San Jose, CA, Razavi’s groups have performed at SF Jazz and San Jose Jazz as well as many Bay Area jazz clubs and concert series. He regularly performs with the area’s top players and has also played with Anton Schwartz, John Stowell, Carl Saunders, and Charles McNeal, among others. His albums have often featured ambitious original music that has been warmly received by jazz radio worldwide.

An avid educator, Razavi is the jazz guitar professor at West Valley College and Chabot College. He has taught at De Anza College, Mission College, and Las Positas College, and maintains a private teaching studio.

Razavi holds holds a M.A. in music with a concentration in Jazz Studies from San Jose State University and a B.M. from the Berklee College of Music where he majored in Contemporary Writing and Production.

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Album Review

Mason Razavi & Bennett Roth-Newell: After You

Read "After You" reviewed by Tyran Grillo


Guitarist Mason Razavi and pianist Bennett Roth-Newell place years of collaborative experience under the microscope in this studio album. The performances, as wide-ranging as they are intimate, comprise a generous handful of original dough with a few familiar tunes thrown in for leavening. In the latter vein, we are treated to three slices of optimism, starting with Clifford Brown's “Joy Spring." In addition to setting the tone for a set of sometimes-whimsical crosstalk, it showcases the duo's ability to unravel ...

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Album Review

Mason Razavi: Quartet Plus, Volume 2

Read "Quartet Plus, Volume 2" reviewed by Tyran Grillo


If “Riverbed," which opens Mason Razavi's burnished sequel to Quartet Plus (First Orbit Sounds, 2014) were a doorway, it would welcome listeners like guests of honor to an intimate yet lively gathering of close friends and family. Such is the feeling of hospitality and warmth that pervades this thoroughly nourishing album. Over this and the next four tunes, all Razavi originals, the guitarist's bandmates regale us with one slick tale after another. The groovier “Blues in New Hues" highlights pianist ...

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Album Review

Mason Razavi: Quartet Plus, Volume 2

Read "Quartet Plus, Volume 2" reviewed by Jack Bowers


The “plus" in San Francisco Bay area-based guitarist Mason Razavi's CD Quartet Plus, Volume 2 is a front line consisting of trumpet, trombone and three reeds, which on the second half of the album more than doubles the size of Razavi's quartet. There are many ways that could be done. For example, the nonet tracks might have been interspersed at random, placed ahead of the quartet tracks, replaced the quartet on odd-or even-numbered tracks and so on. But this is ...

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Album Review

Mason Razavi/Bennett Roth-Newell: After You

Read "After You" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky


While guitarist Mason Razavi and pianist Bennett Roth-Newell have had plenty of opportunities to connect musically in Razavi's Quartet, his expanded Quartet Plus, and elsewhere, this marks the first time that this pair has pared things down to record as a duo. Over the course of eight songs--five originals, two jazz standards, and an album-ending take on a classic from The Beatles--Razavi and Roth-Newell manage to establish themselves as centrists with a shared belief in the powers ...

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Album Review

Mason Razavi: Quartet Plus

Read "Quartet Plus" reviewed by Tyran Grillo


With the release of Quartet Plus, San Francisco Bay Area-based jazzman Mason Razavi joins ranks with a talented crop of guitarists spearheaded by Hristo Vitchev on First Orbit Sounds. His debut for the label fronts all-original compositions and contextualizes his tactile playing in a plush band setting.Half of the album features Razavi in quartet with Bennett Roth-Newell on piano and keyboards, Dan Robbins on bass, and Cody Rhodes on drums. Together they take on the night with thoughtful ...

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Take Five With...

Take Five With Mason Razavi

Read "Take Five With Mason Razavi" reviewed by Mason Razavi


Meet Mason Razavi: Starting out as a self-taught rock guitarist, Mason began studying jazz and playing in working rock bands as a teenager. After hearing an Andres Segovia recording for the first time at age 22, Mason changed directions dramatically and focused on the classical guitar for several years before returning to jazz and the electric guitar. Though first and foremost a jazz guitarist/composer, his diverse background has led him to play in settings ranging from rock bands to ...

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"Razavi is a thoughtful player and composer that offers the listener an introspective experience of deeper meaning, his latest offering is mature rendering of masterful playing and ideas. Razavi is definitely one to watch." - H. Allen Williams, Jazz Times

"Razavi's charts are frequently written halfway between Gil Evans and Either/Orchestra . . . his playing, though, tends mainly to the old George Benson School, carefully chosen notes predominating, rather than pyrotechnics and whizbangery" - Mark Tucker, FAME

"Evocative storytelling (of which opener "Moonlit Message" is a prime example) is the hallmark of Razavi's music. So evocative, in fact, that one hardly needs individual track titles to suggest appropriate interpretations." - Tyran Grillo, All About Jazz

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Photos

Music

Recordings: As Leader | As Sideperson

After You

First Orbit Sounds
2015

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Quartet Plus

First Orbit Sounds
2014

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People, Places, and...

Point Shot Music
2013

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Stompin' at the Savoy

From: Six-String Standards
By Mason Razavi

Riverbed

From: Quartet Plus, Volume 2
By Mason Razavi

Moonlit Message

From: Quartet Plus
By Mason Razavi

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