Liner Notes
Marion Brown: Three For Shepp To Gesprachsfetzen Revisited
by Chris May
"It is often those we hear the least that we should listen to the most." So wrote the Guadeloupean pianist Jonathan Jurion on the release of his album Le Temps Fou: The Music Of Marion Brown (Komos, 2019). Just why Marion Brown has become such a rarely acknowledged figure is unclear. He possessed all the qualifications needed to go large plus a few extras for good measure. He was a good-looking man. He dressed well (telling Dave ...
read moreAngela Verbrugge: Somewhere
by Michael Steinman
The proper response to Beauty is an awed admiring silence. So these liner notes should be one word in a large font: LISTEN. But Angela asked me to add a few hundred keystrokes to the project, so here we are. Incidentally, I have chosen to focus on Angela in the midst of the most superb musicians and arrangements. I hope they will forgive me! Angela Verbrugge is a great subversive. Her work is so quietly insinuating that listeners ...
read moreBill Anschell / Brent Jensen: We Couldn't Agree More
by Thomas Conrad
Wynton Marsalis recently said, “The hallmark of a first-class jazz musician is the ability to adapt." It is a paradoxical statement. But Marsalis is not using the term “adapt" in the Darwinian context of adaptation and natural selection. He does not mean adapting to, say, bad food on the road. He is referring to listening skills and lightning reflexes. Jazz improvisation is a moment-to-moment creative process of real-time interaction and discovery. It would be hard to find a ...
read moreJohn Basile: Heatin' Up
by Bill Milkowski
John Basile's warm tone and impeccable articulation on Heatin' Up at first may trigger memories of the late, great Pat Martino, an iconic guitarist whom Basile obviously admires. But listen closer to the elegant phrasing, the confident use of space and “less is more" approach he applies to tunes like Cy Coleman's “See Saw," the oft-covered standard “For All We Know" or his own gorgeous ballad “Countenance," and another influence comes to mind. As Basile put it, “There's no stronger ...
read moreHadley Caliman / Pete Christlieb: Reunion
by Thomas Conrad
At the end of the first decade of the new millennium, one of the most gratifying developments in jazz is the late blossoming of Hadley Caliman. In 2008, at 76, he released Gratitude, his first recording as a leader in 31 years. It was followed in 2010 by Straight Ahead. They created a buzz on the jazz street. It is not just that he has lasted long enough to finally get the attention he deserves. Hadley Caliman is currently playing ...
read moreRiccardo Arrighini: Cambio di Marcia
by Thomas Conrad
The first time I heard Riccardo Arrighini was at the Umbria Jazz Melbourne festival in Australia in May of 2005. It seems odd, as I look back on it, that I barely noticed him at the festival. The explanation is not that there were other, more famous Italian piano players there, like Stefano Bollani and Danilo Rea. The explanation must be that Arrighini appeared as a member of Francesco Cafiso's quartet. He only got to solo after Cafiso (15 at ...
read moreJordan VanHemert: Deep in the Soil
by C. Andrew Hovan
Born in Korea and raised in Michigan, Jordan VanHemert counts himself among those youngsters that got involved in his school music program by starting out on the alto saxophone. Also like many of his fellow saxophonists, VanHemert eventually moved away from the smaller horn to devote his full energies to the tenor sax, an instrument emblematic of the jazz heritage. “In my formative years, I was almost exclusively an alto saxophonist," VanHemert explained from his current home base in Oklahoma. ...
read moreDino Betti van der Noot: Let Us Recount Our Dreams
by Thomas Conrad
The first time I heard the name Dino Betti van der Noot was in the early summer of 2023. My friend Enzo Capua called me and said that Dino was the best jazz composer in Italy and was looking for someone to write liner notes for his new album. I told Enzo I had too many commitments at the moment to take on another. Still, I was curious. Enzo is the Artistic Consultant to the Umbria Jazz Festival, ...
read moreReeds and Deeds: Cookin'
by C. Andrew Hovan
Chances are that if you're reading these notes right now you're more than a bit familiar with the talents of tenor saxophonists Eric Alexander and Grant Stewart and might even have picked up Wailin' (Criss 1258), their first effort together leading a quintet billed as Reeds and Deeds. As such, it would probably be redundant to go into detailed biographical sketches of each of these men. Suffice it to say that Alexander just might be one of the most recorded ...
read moreJoel Weiskopf: New Beginning
by C. Andrew Hovan
For better or worse, it seems that any artistic endeavor that involves the true expression of raw human experience and emotion is destined to have appeal to only a small and select audience. This dilemma becomes even more daunting for the artist in today's technology-laden society where electronic communication has taken the place of face-to-face conversation. Where the musician or painter seeks to express himself by exposing passion in its natural form, so many in today's society function at a ...
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