Articles by Chris May
Paul Bley: Floater & Syndrome The Upright Piano Sessions Revisited
by Chris May
One way for a musician to conjure rapture is through full-frontal shamanic assault, the sonic equivalent of the Orgasmatron machine that Jane Fonda's character encounters in Roger Vadim's 1968 sci-fi romp Barbarella. Funk is an ideal vehicle. But the sensations produced are superficial and short-lived. A less travelled path instead uses subtlety, understatement and nuance, and the music approaches laterally, almost by stealth. The stratagem demands more of the musician, and indeed more of the listener, but the result can ...
Continue ReadingChris May's Best Jazz Albums Of 2024
by Chris May
In case you missed the sad news, our dear friend and compatriot, Chris May, passed away in November (read our tribute). Below are the albums he considered extraordinary in 2024--a final testament to his discerning taste and love of sound. -mR Rob LuftDahab Days Edition Records Kahil El'ZabarOpen Me: A Higher Consciousness of Sound and Spirit Spiritmuse ...
Continue ReadingJosephine Davies: Satori: Weatherwards
by Chris May
From an international perspective, the best kept secret in British jazz could be tenor and soprano saxophonist Josephine Davies. She first recorded in 2000 as a member of Crissy Lee's Jazz Orchestra, a fifteen piece all-woman band who made one album, the self-produced ...With Body And Soul. (Actually, there was one male in the lineup, trumpeter Craig Wild, and the joke in the boys' club that British jazz pretty much still was at the time, was that he had the ...
Continue ReadingTadd Dameron: Fontainebleau & Magic Touch Revisited
by Chris May
There is much that is tragic about Tadd Dameron's story. The composer, arranger and pianist fell prey to the heroin epidemic that gripped New York's jazz world in the 1940s and 1950s. He did jail time for his addiction in 1959-60. He died at the woefully young age of 48 years in 1965. But there is nothing tragic about Dameron's legacy as a composer-arranger, the field in which he made his most important contribution to jazz. His work was unfailingly ...
Continue ReadingRoy Hargrove's Crisol: Grande-Terre
by Chris May
Increasingly and with growing momentum, right up until he died at the young age of 55 in 2018, Roy Hargrove was a standard bearer for a new kind of African American jazz. The recipe embraced a variety of styles--jazz, Afro-Cuban music, funk, hip hop and soul--and it influenced a generation of musicians in jazz and beyond. But Hargrove never abandoned jazz, the foundation stone of his style. Instead he regarded other genres as part of a rainbow ...
Continue ReadingTop Ten Sci-Fi Jazz Albums
by Chris May
On The Launch Pad Robert Frosch, head honcho at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration from 1977 to 1981, wrote that at cocktail parties he was sometimes asked whether NASA had some gizmo or other that had recently been brought to fictional life in a sci-fi book or movie. If Frosch's answer was “No," the next question was usually, “Are you going to get one?" To which Frosch's answer, a truthful one, was often, “We're working on it."
Continue ReadingSidsel Endresen, Jan Bang, Erik Honoré: Punkt Live Remixes Vol.2
by Chris May
The person who ought to be reviewing this album is, of course, the longtime AAJ writer and editor John Kelman/Dave Binder. Dave attended Punkt festivals on behalf of AAJ from the mid 2000s to the late 2010s, when ill-health stopped him making the long-haul flights to Norway. He was fascinated by Punkt's live- remixes, reporting on them in detail on a daily basis during the festivals. Dave was probably the first North American-based jazz writer to latch on to the ...
Continue ReadingFlock: Flock II
by Chris May
Flock is composed of five of the most venturesome musicians in British jazz. Reeds and woodwind player Tamar Osborn, drummers and percussionists Bex Burch and Sarathy Korwar, and keyboard players Danalogue and Al MacSween. Separately and collaboratively, they have since the late 2010s given us landmark genre-crossing albums in bands including Emanative, The Comet Is Coming, Vula Viel, Collocutor, Dele Sosimi's Afrobeat Orchestra, Upaj Collective and Kefaya. So the auguries look good for Flock's sophomore release, the ...
Continue ReadingNeil Cowley Trio: Entity
by Chris May
British pianist Neil Cowley put his trio on hold in 2017 to go solo. Entity marks the return of the group, which is completed by bassist Rex Horan and drummer Evan Jenkins. This is their eighth album since 2006, and the fourth with Horan in the lineup (Jenkins has been present from the start). The press materials accompanying the album include a statement from Cowley about the need for “human push back" against the potentially malign aspects of digital technology, ...
Continue ReadingDann Zinn: Two Roads
by Chris May
Bliss. Here is a tenor saxophonist to file next to the great New York-based Israeli tenor saxophonist Oded Tzur. The two players are far from interchangeable: each has their distinct sound and each has their distinct style. But both bring intimacy and solace to the soul, and both beam out a vibe of positivity. Tzur and Dann Zinn have come from various places to arrive at adjacent spots. Tzur's style is steeped in years of study of Indian classical raga. ...
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