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Jazz Articles about Jon Christensen
Farnell Newton, Nuphar Fey and a tribute to Jon Christensen
by Bob Osborne
Two featured new albums from Farnell Newton and Nuphar Fey and a comprehensive tribute to Norwegian drummer Jon Christensen who passed away on 18th February Farnell Newton gets up on the good foot and heads off full speed ahead on his second leader album for Posi-Tone. This action packed session features the high powered front line of Newton's trumpet, and Brandon Wright's hard-swinging tenor saxophone, alongside the all-star rhythm section of organist Brian Charette and drummer Rudy Royston. ...
read moreYelena Eckemoff: Nocturnal Animals
by Mark Sullivan
Pianist-composer Yelena Eckemoff is predictably unpredictable. After an early series of piano trio albums she worked with larger ensembles, culminating in the sextet (plus vocalists) of Better Than Gold And Silver (L&H, 2018). After cutting back to a duet with drummer Manu Katché on Colors (L&H, 2019) she returns with a larger band, but with a difference; this is a quartet with double bassist Arild Andersen (her longest collaborator), and drummer/percussionists Jon Christensen and Thomas Strønen. It may ...
read moreYelena Eckemoff: Nocturnal Animals
by Dan McClenaghan
"You're busy appearing or you're busy disappearing." Drummer-bandleader Art Blakey may have said that; if he didn't, he should have. Somebody had to express the importance of presenting your work, for getting it out there to an audience. This goes for virtually any artist in any medium. Double down on that for people who create jazz. Pianist Yelena Eckemoff rolls with the “busy appearing" concept. She is prolific; since her debut recording , Cold Sun (L & H, ...
read moreYelena Eckemoff Quartet: Everblue
by Neri Pollastri
A due anni di distanza dall'ottimo Glass Song, realizzato in trio, la pianista Yelena Eckemoff, moscovita da oltre vent'anni stabilitasi negli Stati Uniti, allarga la formazione mantenendone l'impianto culturale: ai due monumenti della musica scandinava Arild Andersen e jon Christensen aggiunge infatti il sassofonista Tore Brunborg, per formare un quartetto dalla cifra meditativa e dal lirismo evocatico tipicamente nordici. Le composizioni di questo Everblue sono quasi tutte della pianista (fanno eccezione solo “Prism" e “Man," di Andersen), la ...
read moreYelena Eckemoff Quartet: Everblue
by Dan McClenaghan
In a quick follow-up to her masterful two CD set Lions, Russian-born and now North Carolina-based pianist Yelena Eckemoff offers up Everblue, the most “ECM Records-sounding" set not on that deservedly esteemed label. It is, rather, released on her own L&H Productions. The names of the sidemen on the date explain in part the ECM-like sound: saxophonist Tore Brunborg, bassist Arild Andersen, and drummer Jon Christensen, the Norwegian contingent, are all long time ECM Records artists, as leaders ...
read moreMiroslav Vitous Group
by John Kelman
With the ongoing demand for historic titles to see first-time CD issue, ECM has raised the ante even further with Re:solutions: seven classic recordings, released on CD (four available for the first time and one previously only available for a limited time in Japan), vinyl and high resolution digital formats. They're all important, but 1981's Miroslav Vitous Group stands out as one of the most significant, completing, as it does—and more than three decades after the fact—the Czech bassist's early ...
read moreEberhard Weber: Colours
by John Kelman
As the jazz-rock fusion movement gained ground from its early years in the late 1960s through its glory days in the early-to-mid-1970s—blending the more sophisticated harmonies of jazz with rock music's rhythmic power and high volume—all too often it was about muscular chops and complex writing for the sake of it. Little attention was paid to nuance and understatement. While guitarist John McLaughlin's high octane Mahavishnu Orchestra and keyboard player Chick Corea's guitar-centric incarnation of Return to Forever were tearing ...
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