Reviews

"Mr. Stripling stopped the show."
- New York Times - Peter Watrous (6/19/98)
"Mr. Stripling is a powerful trumpeter, at ease with the most complicated and detailed bebop lines and an open-armed Armstrong swagger."
- New York Times - Peter Watrous (12/22/89)
"...one of the weekend's remarkable debuts ... was Byron Stripling, a towering and powerful trumpet player, who has been compared to a later Louis Armstrong, but whose lightning runs and startling intervals are right out of bop. When he played ... the effect was an abbreviated history of jazz in two choruses."
- Los Angeles Times - Charles Champlin
"Byron Stripling blew some butter-toned, full-vibrato high-register trumpet that was the most direct conjuring of Gillespie by any of the trumpeters last night."
- Pittsburgh Post-Gazette - Peter B. King
"... trumpeter Byron Stripling brought down the house with his uproarious singing of 'Minnie The Moocher," which became a lusty audience sing-along."
- San Francisco Examiner - Phillip Elwood
"... Stripling, a charismatic soloist... The outsized tone and flamboyant virtuosity he brought to Dizzy Gillespie's "A Night In Tunisia" and the lyric poetry he expressed in "I Can't Get Started" set a high standard..."
- Chicago Tribune - Howard Reich
"... Stripling let loose with a fusillade of roaring notes that nearly blew down the piano top ­ and he was standing off in a corner 15 feet from the microphone."
- Boston Herald - Bob Young
"Trumpeter Byron Stripling wailed New Orleans-style but also negotiated bebop runs like Kenny Dorham and had the ... audience shouting for joy with his earthy blues singing."
- The Denver Post - Jeff Bradley
"Stripling has... a strong pure tone well into the upper register, superb control (demonstrated time and time again on long held notes) and a fluid attack that produced lengthy, well articulated melodic lines. No mere showoff, however, he played with laudable taste and musicality..."
- Saint Paul Pioneer Press - Bob Protzman
"... the show was constantly stolen by the bristling virtuosity of Marsalis, Faddis and Stripling, who kicked things off in fine style with Louis Armstrong's 'West End Blues'."
- New York Post - Lee Jeske

 

"... and Byron Stripling, the leading Armstrong-legatee of the '90s, playing Pops, Pops, and more Pops ­ not just the tunes, mind you, but the feeling, the ideas, the erotic glow."
- Village Voice - Gary Giddins
"In between were Clark Terry, Freddy Hubbard, the Brazilian Claudio Roditi and the impassioned, high-powered Byron Stripling."
- Los Angeles Times- Leonard Feather