Articles by Brandt Reiter

Big Bands: Fred Ho, Roy Hargrove, Brooklyn Big Band, Charles Tolliver

by Brandt Reiter
January 16, 2010

Fred Ho and the The Green Monster Big Band Celestial Green Monster Mutable Music2009 Roy HargroveEmergenceGroovin' High2009 Brooklyn Big Band Live at Sweet Rhythm Candid2009 Charles Tolliver Big Band Emperor March (Live at the Blue Note) HalfNote2009 “The ...

Paul Motian: On Broadway Vol. 5

by Brandt Reiter
November 10, 2009

The brushes are out as drummer Paul Motian continues his ongoing disc series, On Broadway. This latest installment features Motian's less starry “2000" trio, with bassist Thomas Morgan and saxophonist Loren Stillman, plus a second saxophonist, Michaël Attias and pianist Masabumi Kikuchi (who also participated on Vol. 4). Two decades on, the recipe remains the same--loving, thoughtful explorations of mostly Broadway tunes by one of jazz's great skins-men. This volume is perhaps the most intimate of this ...

Sex Mob: Sexmob Meets Medeski live in Willisau 2006

by Brandt Reiter
November 9, 2009

How best to describe slide trumpeter Steven Bernstein's singular quartet Sex Mob? Maybe we should start with mercurial musical magician Bernstein himself, whose exotic career as sideman, musical director, arranger and composer has included ten years with John Lurie's Lounge Lizards and stints alongside everyone from Bill Frisell to Sam Rivers, the Flying Karamazov Brothers and, oh yes, Bootsy Collins. Or maybe we should look at his career as bandleader, which includes the trumpet-slide guitar-tuba trio Spanish Fly and the ...

Cecil Taylor / Tony Oxley: Leaf Palm Hand

by Brandt Reiter
January 19, 2009

If music criticism is difficult and jazz criticism is most difficult of all (how can any writer capture the essence of a form so elastic and alive?), well, what then to do with Cecil Taylor, the tireless 78-year-old avant-garde piano eminence whose iconoclastic style remains so singular and uncompromising that it defies any attempts at definition, much less explanation? It's enough to make any self-respecting critic retire permanently from the business. Structurally, Taylor's music is essentially motivic ...

Lafayette Gilchrist: Soul Progressin' & Live in Berlin

by Brandt Reiter
January 10, 2009

Lafayette Gilchrist Soul Progressin' Hyena 2008 David Murray Live in Berlin Jazzwerkstatt 2008

I first heard pianist Lafayette Gilchrist in 2003, playing a one-night-stand duo gig with reed colossus David Murray. Gilchrist honed his chops in Baltimore and DC and worked under the national radar until Murray took him under his ...

David Sanchez: Cultural Survival

by Brandt Reiter
October 10, 2008

Never one to play it safe, the adventurous Puerto Rican saxophonist David Sánchez has switched record labels, leaving Sony Music after a fruitful 11-year stint that culminated in a Latin Grammy for Coral, his 2004 CD of Latin classics with strings. He’s also revamped his band--out is longtime alto sax associate Miguel Zenón (who’s since emerged as a terrific leader in his own right); replacing him in the ensemble’s frontline is the young Norwegian guitarist Lage Lund, winner of the ...

David Murray: 3D Family & Sacred Ground

by Brandt Reiter
May 4, 2008

David Murray 3D Family hatOLOGY 2007 David Murray Sacred Ground Justin Time 2007

Cut in 1976 and released the following year, Flowers For Albert, David Murray's thunderclap of a debut as a leader, left little doubt that the next heavyweight champion of the tenor had arrived. Careening with unsettling assurance between ...

Roy Haynes: The Sound of Sonny & We Three

by Brandt Reiter
December 8, 2007

Sonny Rollins The Sound of Sonny (Keepnews Collection) Riverside-Concord 2007 Roy Haynes/Phineas Newborn/Paul Chambers We Three New Jazz-Concord 2007

Sonny Rollins needs no introduction. Nor, most likely, does The Sound of Sonny, a classic 1957 quartet disc with pianist Sonny Clark, trapsman Roy Haynes and alternating bassists Percy Heath and Paul ...

Steve Kuhn: Pastorale

by Brandt Reiter
September 9, 2007

Though he's been an inimitable sideman for jazz legends like John Coltrane, Stan Getz and Arts Farmer and Blakey and though he's been leading his own first-rate groups for decades, Steve Kuhn has never become a household name. Like his frequent (and equally idiosyncratic) collaborator Sheila Jordan, he's better known abroad than here, both in Europe and Japan--which is where this new disc comes in. For Pastorale, actually, is not new--it's the overdue American release of a superb trio session ...

Andrew Cyrille with Greg Osby: Low Blue Flame

by Brandt Reiter
July 17, 2007

"Every once in a while, the saxophonist and drummer just have to be alone. So said the venerable tenorist Benny Golson in concert a few years ago, a coy grin creeping over his face, before launching himself into the stratosphere against his drummer of the evening. “Against, because that's often the form the sax/drums duet takes--a no-holds-barred, take-no-prisoners, raucously unrestrained and joyfully unapologetic, cacophonous battle to the finish line. On Low Blue Flame however, drummer Andrew Cyrille and saxophonist Greg ...