Jazz Articles

Orthodox: Supreme

by Karl Ackermann
January 25, 2017

As part of a 2010 five-disc anthology, The NYFA Collection: 25 Years of New York New Music (Innova), one musician, Eric John Eigner, contributed a piece called “Music for Faucet" which consisted of the sounds from his Brooklyn bathroom faucet. By manipulating pitch and rhythm through the flow of hot and cold water, and adjusting the valves, Eigner produced a variety of sounds. It certainly has a musicality to it but is it noise or music? For many, noise is ...

Eye Contact: Embracing the Tide/Making Eye Contact with God

by Florence Wetzel
January 29, 2006

This is the real thing: raw, live avant-garde jazz recorded in New York City, music that soars and uplifts and ignores all boundaries. Trumpeter and bass clarinetist Matt Lavelle is blessed with technical skill and great heart, and he's fueled by a ferocious spiritual imperative. His music questions and explodes human limitations, and he's constantly discovering new ways to express this search. Currently Lavelle is rewriting the rules for the trumpet by using a scale that includes nondiatonic notes, giving ...

Sepia Trio: Cleft

by Andrey Henkin
December 14, 2005

Cleft's genre comes up as “unclassifiable in iTunes. While this is a little bit of a stretch, the Sepia Trio's mix of disparate energy music traditions, most audibly The Fringe, is impressive. Seth Meicht (sax), Brendan Dougherty (drums, electronics), and a new bassist, the much older Akira Ando, recorded Cleft in Dougherty's adopted home of Germany, both live and in the studio. Just when the opening ten-minute “Losgelassen leads a listener to expect an album of aggressive ...

The Rempis Percussion Quartet: Circular Logic

by AAJ Staff
August 14, 2005

Dave Rempis is best known as the other saxophonist in the Vandermark 5, a ferocious virtuoso improviser who's at home in every style of music you can name. With Circular Logic, one of the most exciting albums of the year, Rempis steps up to lead a free bop band with two rampaging drummers.

The music on Circular Logic consists of two long completely improvised performances, both recorded live. On “1.2," which runs for over half an hour, Rempis ...