Jazz Articles
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Caleb Wheeler Curtis and Laurent Nicoud: Substrate
by Paul Rauch
The duo, in jazz or any musical form, is an intimate conversation that requires a large degree of artistic courage. The participants must be willing to expose themselves emotionally as well as musically. It is brutally honest, a practice in individuality within the context of mutual respect and humility. In the case of Swiss pianist Laurent Nicoud and Brooklyn based alto saxophonist Caleb Wheeler Curtis, it is a venture into the musical wilderness without being safely tethered to the efforts ...
read moreFranco Ambrosetti: Lost Within You
by Chris M. Slawecki
Lost Within You is a masterpiece of smoldering passion and beauty ignited by the exquisite trumpet and flugelhorn melodies of Franco Ambrosetti. Ambrosetti assembled an enviable ensemble: bassist Scott Colley and drummer Jack DeJohnette in the rhythm section, plus guitarist John Scofield, and Renee Rosnes and Uri Caine switching turns as pianist. But the star of Lost Within You is Ambrosetti's haunting, delicate and graceful sound, revealed in one masterful ballad after another. “Miles Davis was ...
read moreSam Braysher Trio: Dance Little Lady, Dance Little Man
by Thomas Fletcher
It was back in 2017 when we were first introduced to Sam Braysher with his debut release Golden Earrings (Fresh Sound New Talent), performed alongside pianist, Michael Kanan and featuring a collection of reinterpreted songs from the Great American Songbook. Braysher is now following his own footsteps by releasing a trio album with a similar theme. The London-based alto saxophonist sees himself line up with Catalan percussionist Jorge Rossy, most recognisable for his spell with the Brad Mehldau ...
read moreBenjamin Koppel: The Ultimate Soul & Jazz Revue
by Chris M. Slawecki
Listen to music long enough, and it's almost bound to happen: You're not sure exactly what you want to listen to, but you know that whatever you listen to needs must bump and groove. The Ultimate Soul & Jazz Revue, an anthology of American jazz, soul and R&B recorded live at a Copenhagen music festival by Danish saxophonist Benjamin Koppel and his big band, is some first-rate scratch for that itch. Ultimate Soul & Jazz neatly packages Koppel's ...
read moreFranco Ambrosetti: Lost Within You
by Doug Collette
The Franco Ambrosetti Band Band's Lost Within You is a supremely unassuming listening experience. An all-star band helps the trumpeter composer conjure a sensuous mood that only grows progressively engrossing over the course of the seventy-plus minutes playing time of the album. The seductive sensation is an inexorable process that commences with the very first cut. The second-longest track on the record next to “Body and Soul," Horace Silver's “Peace" features drummer Jack DeJohnette at the piano and ...
read moreFranco Ambrosetti Band: Lost Within You
by Dan McClenaghan
Swiss trumpeter / flugelhorninst Franco Ambrosetti opens his Lost Within You with “Peace," from the pen of pianist Horace Silver. The original rendition comes from Silver's Blowin' The Blues Away (Blue Note, 1959). It was a composition that Silver stumbled upon when he was “doodling around on the piano, and it just came to me." It featured Blue Mitchell's characteristically brassy trumpet tone. It was unusual in the Silver songbook—an introspective, patiently deployed ballad, instead of the normal hard-charging, romps ...
read moreMoonMot: Going Down The Well
by Bruce Lindsay
Six musicians from the UK and Switzerland, with a strong background in improvisation and a talent for mixing acoustic and electronic instrumentation, creating tunes which move from the gentle, Rhodes-led, intro to “35 Years" and the bass-sax interplay which opens “Threnody Of The English Polity" to the raucous baritone sax of the title track—that is MoonMot on Going Down The Well. The sextet formed in 2017 when saxophonists Dee Byrne (Entropi, Deemer) and Cath Roberts (Sloth Racket, Favourite ...
read moreFranco Ambrosetti: Long Waves
by Chris M. Slawecki
Trumpeter Franco Ambrosetti balances in the middle of three jazz generations, the father of saxophonist Gianluca and son of saxophonist Flavio, who once played opposite Charlie Parker at the Paris Jazz Festival. Although he grew up studying classical piano, which you strongly hear in the long lines of his lyrical playing, he picked up trumpet at age 17. Ambrosetti was profoundly changed when he inevitably discovered Miles Davis. “Miles sometimes was playing just three notes but with so ...
read moreFranco Ambrosetti Quintet: Long Waves
by Mark Sullivan
Veteran Swiss jazz trumpeter/flugelhornist/composer Franco Ambrosetti leads what amounts to a blowing session: mostly his originals, plus a couple of standards. But what a band it is. In bebop's heyday the group likely would have been billed as “All Stars." Guitarist John Scofield, pianist Uri Caine, bassist Scott Colley and drummer Jack DeJohnette have an illustrious playing history--as leaders and sidemen--with Amrosetti and many others. They take a remarkably measured approach, sounding like a real band rather than a collection ...
read moreFranco Ambrosetti: Long Waves
by Dan Bilawsky
Trumpeter Franco Ambrosetti is a master of both glow and go aesthetics. With a warm and burnished tone, lines giving off circumfluent suggestions in their whorling beauty, an eye on motion and expansion, and a strong sense of swing, he's content to take the fast lane or simply take his time. And with more than 50 years of recording experience and over two dozen dates under his own name, why shouldn't he be comfortable just being himself? ...
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