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Dan McClenaghan's Top Jazz Recordings of 2022
by Dan McClenaghan
The top jazz recordings of 2022, in no particular order. Justin MorellExit Music For Intelligent Life On Earth Sonic Frenzy Records A provocative and beautiful guitar and drums album. Guitarist Justin Morell has teamed with drummer Mark Ferber (see postscript concerning Ferber at the end of this article) to construct an important set of sounds addressing climate change and global warming with a science fiction-like exit of the Earth to escape these problems. This ...
read moreBenjamin Lackner: Last Decade
by Dan McClenaghan
In a 2006 interview for All About Jazz written by Joao Moriera dos Santos, pianist/keyboardist Benjamin Lackner was asked: “What label would you like to be on in the near future?" He said, simply, “ECM." That seemed ambitious for Lackner at that stage of his career. He was 29 years old at the time and boasted only two albums under his own name—one of them was Sign Of The Times (Nagel Heyer, 2006), released a bit before the interview—along with ...
read moreBenny Lackner Trio: Drake
by Dan McClenaghan
Pianist Benny Lackner was born in Germany, but moved to the United States at thirteen years of age. He spent his formative years in California, and received his BFA from the California Institute of the Arts. Studies with pianist Brad Mehldau followed. Then, at thirty years of age, Lackner returned to Berlin from his adopted New York base. From Germany, the albums—with a superb trio—started coming. Drake is the Benny Lackner Trio's sixth offering. Stylistically, Lackner doesn't sound ...
read moreBenny Lackner Trio: Siskiyou
by Dan McClenaghan
The photo on the main page of Benny Lackner's website shows the pianist with one hand on an acoustic piano, the other plying the keys of a laptop computer. That's where his muse has taken him-into a very contemporary electro/acoustic piano trio mix with drummer Matthieu Chazarec and bassist Jerome Regard. Siskiyou is Lackner's fifth trio outing, and his second with this particular line-up, after 2012's Cachuma (BMH Productions). It is his best and most focused outing. The ...
read moreBenny Lackner Trio: Cachuma
by Dan McClenaghan
Pianist Benny Lackner can do whatever he wants, and says as much with “I Can Do Whatever I Want," the opener on his forward-leaning Cachuma. This piano trio outing suggests he wants to nudge the trio setting into a modern groove while giving voice to his own artistic vision.Modernization of the tried and true piano trio format is an ongoing process. e.s.t., led by the late Swedish pianist Esbjörn Svensson, incorporated electronics with great success, while John Medeski ...
read moreBernard - Emer - Lackner - Ferber: Night for Day
by AAJ Italy Staff
Night for Day è un buon esempio dell’equivoco, più o meno volontario, nel quale navigano molti musicisti delle nuove generazioni. Preparazione ferrea alle spalle, grande confidenza con i più disparati stili musicali, estrema scioltezza nel condividere l’esperienza musicale con colleghi dal diverso background formativo. Ma poi, alla resa dei conti, permane l’incertezza sulla direzione da prendere, sulla capacità di elaborare un linguaggio personale che faccia tesoro della massa di sollecitazioni e di input esterni, evitando operazioni di copia-incolla o di ...
read moreBenny Lackner Trio: Pilgrim
by Michael J. West
The rock-ish but very adult Pilgrim is a cautionary example of why detail is important in jazz. On a cursory listen, the Benny Lackner Trio sounds like a Bad Plus imitator: the rock influence is heavy, pianist Lackner shares Ethan Iverson's harmonic trajectory and heavy touch, and drummer Robert Perkins' sound is superficially like Dave King's bash-and-crash. What's more, the fifth track is titled “Brad Plus," a dead giveaway if ever there was one. That first impression is illusory. Deeper ...
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