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14

Article: Album Review

Kelvin Sholar Trio: Rites of Fire

Read "Rites of Fire" reviewed by Franz A. Matzner


A syncretic symphony, Kelvin Sholar's Rites of Fire is the product of 15 years of meditation on the history and esoteric mechanisms of musical expression. The richly satisfying album is unbounded by anything other than Sholar's relentless commitment to self-discovery. Sholar's own resurrection from clinical death to artistic and spiritual rebirth is embedded in the core ...

10

Article: Catching Up With

Jack DeJohnette: Bill Evans Legacy

Read "Jack DeJohnette: Bill Evans Legacy" reviewed by Franz A. Matzner


Modern Drummer Hall of Fame inductee, drummer and pianist Jack DeJohnette has shaped jazz drumming for decades. A compatriot of illustrious players like Miles Davis, Sonny Rollins, John Scofield, and many more, DeJohnette helped shape a new conception of what the drums could bring to ensembles, including adding color, detail, and fluid interplay. His contributions to ...

9

Article: Album Review

Bill Evans: Bill Evans Live at Ronnie Scott's

Read "Bill Evans Live at Ronnie Scott's" reviewed by Franz A. Matzner


Bill Evans: Live At Ronnie Scott's brings to mind the phrase “on the shoulders of giants." Evans's stature in jazz history is unassailable, his influence having touched much of the music's subsequent trajectories, while also establishing a new, discernable branch of the jazz tree traceable to the present-day. A two-disc package, Bill Evans: Live at Ronnie ...

9

Article: Album Review

Mary Halvorson: Artlessly Falling

Read "Artlessly Falling" reviewed by Franz A. Matzner


Released by Mary Halvorson's Code Girl, Artlessly Falling presents eight new compositions, each of which is structured around a specific poetic form with accompanying lyrics/poems by Halvorson herself. The forms represent a significant diversity of cultural origins and eras, including Japanese Tanka, 12th century Sestina, French Villanelle, and Malay Pantoum. With each of the ...

7

Article: Album Review

Junk Magic: Compass Confusion

Read "Compass Confusion" reviewed by Franz A. Matzner


Density. Shifting ground. Textural discord. Sharpness like glass. Resonant emptiness. Explorative improvisation, electronica sound spaces and electric beats. Released by the Craig Taborn project Junk Magic, Compass Confusion moves the fusion of live performance with electronica to the next level, making the division between the two often difficult to discern. The album incorporates a ...

5

Article: Album Review

Lafayette Gilchrist: Now

Read "Now" reviewed by Franz A. Matzner


Pianist and composer Lafayette Gilchrist has made clear that, in part, Now addresses the racial and political conflicts erupting across America in 2020. The music is suitably intense and tumultuous. The album demands change while also reminding us that the violence and divisions splintering the country are not new. The repression and oppression embedded ...

1

Article: Album Review

Jacek Kochan & musiConspiracy: Occupational Hazard

Read "Occupational Hazard" reviewed by Franz A. Matzner


Polish-born and current Canadian Jacek Kochan's 22nd release as a leader, Occupational Hazard, exists at the crossroads of straight ahead and electric jazz. A drummer, composer and arranger, Kochan has played with a variety of musicians over the course of his long career. On Occupational Hazard he leverages this broad experience to bring together ...

10

Article: Interview

Adam Rudolph: Ragmala and Prototypical Music

Read "Adam Rudolph: Ragmala and Prototypical Music" reviewed by Franz A. Matzner


Adam Rudolph has been seeking to push the boundaries of musical creativity for decades, developing a unique concept of composition, ensemble interaction, and conducting. As many writers have commented, his music resists critical commentary due to its prototypical nature. Said another way, Rudolph's music doesn't sound like anything else, and its antecedents are so varied that ...

1

Article: Album Review

Chelsea McBride's Socialist Night School: Aftermath

Read "Aftermath" reviewed by Franz A. Matzner


Carve out an hour to listen to Socialist Night School's Aftermath because the combination of big-band music and progressive, challenging lyrics demands it. There's no way to let either simply wash over the ears. The music is too blunt, the lyrics too developed and too integral to absorb passively. The follow up to the ...

9

Article: Album Review

Bill Frisell: Harmony

Read "Harmony" reviewed by Franz A. Matzner


Renowned guitarist Bill Frisell's Blue Note Records debut Harmony is a pleasant album. This does not imply lack of innovation, the saccharine sound or the absence of bite and sorrow. These hues of bite and sorrow actually dominate the fourteen selections, which in patented Frisell manner run the gamut from traditional Americana to Elvis Costello to ...


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