Jazz Articles about Becca Stevens

Kate McGarry + Keith Ganz Ensemble: What to Wear in the Dark

by C. Michael Bailey
October 22, 2021

Being taken for granted is the greatest tribute and worst slight to any artist. Kate McGarry has made music that brilliantly colors outside the lines since her release, Show Me (Palmetto Records) in 2003 (there was a 1992 standards release, Easy To Love (Vital Records) that is out-of-print). Her career has provided five provocatively thoughtful and inventive recordings between that release and 2018's The Subject Tonight Is Love (Binxtown Records). Listeners have come to expect something a little different from ...

Kate McGarry + Keith Ganz Ensemble: What to Wear in the Dark

by Dan McClenaghan
October 19, 2021

Let us start with a nod to Steely Dan, the rock/jazz group headed up by Walter Becker and Donald Fagen, a pair of tunesmiths who hit a career zenith in the early 1970s with albums like Can't Buy A Thrill (1972), Countdown To Ecstasy (1973), Pretzel Logic (1974) and Aja (1974), all on ABC Records. The group drew in top jazz artists to help craft their albums—saxophonists Wayne Shorter and Tom Scott, guitarists Larry Carlton and Lee Ritenour, drummers Steve ...

Becca Stevens

by Joseph Vella
April 23, 2021

Thana Alexa: ONA

by Angelo Leonardi
April 15, 2021

Ci giunge con un po' di ritardo questo secondo disco della talentuosa vocalist e compositrice Thana Alexa, ma va assolutamente considerato. Anche questo, come già il debutto Ode to Heroes, è un tributo: dalle figure musicali che l'hanno influenzata siamo passati a una celebrazione del genere femminile e al ruolo—spesso sottovalutato—che svolgono nel mondo. Nata a New York da famiglia croata, Thana è tornata nell'infanzia in Croazia dov'è rimasta per completare i suoi studi. Successivamente si è ...

Steve Haines and The Third Floor Orchestra: Steve Haines and The Third Floor Orchestra

by Angelo Leonardi
April 7, 2021

Dare al lettore—nel breve spazio di una recensione—l'idea del contenuto e del valore (in un giudizio ovviamente soggettivo) di un album spinge a usare tutte quelle classificazioni nate per orientarci. In poche parole, creare delle mappe è utile ma se il territorio è ricco di elementi diversi si rischia di usare etichette fuorvianti. L'ascolto di questo disco orchestrale di Steve Haines spinge a queste considerazioni per il suo collocarsi tra differenti universi musicali (folk, classica, jazz, canzone ...

Becca Stevens and Elan Mehler: Pallet On Your Floor

by Karl Ackermann
January 20, 2021

Elan Mehler is well known as a producer and as co-founder of the all-vinyl Newvelle Records label, which he co-founded in 2016. Mehler's pianist-composer bona fides are long-established. His eight recordings to date have reflected a wide variety of approaches. The experimental remixes of Scheme For Thought (Brownswood Recordings, 2007), classical influences on Early Sunday Morning (Challenge Records, 2014), and the carnival raucousness of TJ and the Revenge (Little Lost Records, 2019) are in the mix. But, early on in ...

2020's Travel Songs - Part 1

by Ludovico Granvassu
January 9, 2021

In this year of painful confinement music has been a much needed source of solace, with its capacity to take us beyond our times and across space. Here some of the best “travel songs" that we've been digging this year, while planning on taking them on a real road-trip as soon as possible. Happy listening! Playlist Alicia Waller & The Excursion “Soul" Some Hidden Treasure -EP (Innova) 00:00 Michael Leonhart Orchestra with Elvis Costello & JSwiss ...