Articles by Joshua Weiner
New Reissue Series Offers A First-Class Ticket To Moodsville
by Joshua Weiner
With the rise of consumer culture in the 1950s and 1960s, hi-fi systems on which to play newly available stereo records became de rigueur for those who aspired to sophisticated leisure time. A wide variety of “mood music" albums, from classical to exotica to jazz, promised the perfect soundtrack for any emotional state or social gathering. Sometimes following the formula of “Music To _____By," these records offered listeners auditory wallpaper of varying degrees of kitsch, taste, and quality. Into this ...
Continue Reading...Vince Guaraldi: It's a Mystery, Charlie Brown
by Joshua Weiner
The winsome series of pianist Vince Guaraldi's soundtracks for the original Peanuts television specials is a gift from Lee Mendelson Film Productions that keeps on giving. Arriving just in time for “spooky season" is the premiere release of music from 1974's It's a Mystery, Charlie Brown, with three colored vinyl pressings unique to individual retailers (Urban Outfitters, Barnes & Noble, and Think Indie) available on September 11, 2026, followed by the wide release of black vinyl, CD, and digital versions ...
Continue Reading...John Shannon: A Day In Tarifa
by Joshua Weiner
Pittsburgh guitarist John Shannon began playing at age six, was performing around his hometown by his high school years, and has been recording with a variety of acoustic, rock and film music projects since 2008. A Day in Tarifa is his debut jazz album, and it lands firmly in the tradition, with a diverse and beguiling set of original tunes performed by an outstanding trio including Cliff Barnes on organ and James Johnson III on drums. The song titles and ...
Continue Reading...Emilio Solla and La Inestable de Brooklyn: Handmade
by Joshua Weiner
As the power of artificial intelligence (AI) grows exponentially, it has begun to permeate even the highest expressions of our humanity. AI-generated art of many kinds--literary, visual, and musical--appears on screens large and small daily. Handmade, a gorgeous double album by New York-based Argentinian pianist and composer Emilio Solla, featuring his nonet Inestable de Brooklyn, seeks to build a bridge across this uncanny valley." Handmade is an apologia of the tactile," says GRAMMY-nominated Solla. “We are moving further away from ...
Continue Reading...Arnold Ludvig Quintet: Live at Maggies ’18
by Joshua Weiner
Should anyone doubt that jazz is alive and well in all corners of the globe, Live at Maggies '18, an enjoyable live album by the quintet led by fretless electric bassist Arnold Ludvig will prove the point. Ludvig hails from the Faroe Islands archipelago, an autonomous territory of Denmark located between Norway, Iceland, and Scotland. Born in 1968, he began playing bass at the age of 12 and composing at the age of 23. After studying jazz in Reykjavik and ...
Continue Reading...Thelonious Monk: Live In Paris 1967 Volume One
by Joshua Weiner
The discography of Thelonious Monk, bebop architect, composer of enduring standards and idiosyncratically influential pianist, is vast. In addition to Monk's genre-defining studio recordings, several live sets were released during his lifetime, including a notable series put out by Columbia Records during Monk's time on that most major of major labels, from 1962 to 1968. Live In Paris 1967 (Volume One) is a notable addition for several reasons: it is the first official release of material by the Monk Estate ...
Continue Reading...Alex Wintz: Collage
by Joshua Weiner
Grammy-nominated guitarist Alex Wintz is not only a frequent performer, both with his own group and with artists such as the trumpeters Etienne Charles and Jeremy Pelt and trombonist Nick Finzer, but also an educator on the faculty of the New Jersey Performing Arts Center Jazz for Teens program and a clever composer. Collage features six excellent original tunes along with the jazz standard “The Shadow of Your Smile" and George Harrison's “Isn't It A Pity" and follows Wintz's two ...
Continue Reading...Cecil Taylor: Fragments: The Complete 1969 Salle Pleyel Concerts
by Joshua Weiner
"On one level you can look at him as one of the grandfathers of the free jazz tradition," says pianist Matthew Shipp of Cecil Taylor in the generous booklet included with Fragments: The Complete 1969 Salle Pleyel Concerts, a three-LP set released by Elemental Music for Record Store Day 2026 (CD and digital releases will also follow). “But on the other hand...(h)e was very insistent that he came out of a certain tradition, and he talked about Ellington, Monk, and ...
Continue Reading...Joe Henderson: Consonance: Live At The Jazz Showcase
by Joshua Weiner
After 15 years in the vaults, Consonance: Live at the Jazz Showcase represents the first fruits of “Jazz Detective" producer Zev Feldman's expedition into the tape archives of Chicago club owner Joe Segal. Working with Joe's son Wayne Segal, Feldman and Resonance Records founder George Klabin have prepared a quartet of vinyl sets, recorded live at The Jazz Showcase, for Record Store Day 2026, with CD and digital releases to follow a week later. Joining Joe Henderson's triple LP (or ...
Continue Reading...Bill Evans: At The BBC 1965
by Joshua Weiner
Jazz 625 was a British television show, hosted by trumpeter Humphrey Lyttelton, that ran from 1964 to 1966 on BBC2; the name comes from the higher-resolution 625-line UHF system that the station employed for broadcast. The show featured a variety of British musicians as well as top American artists such as Art Blakey, Jimmy Giuffre, Dave Brubeck, Oscar Peterson, Thelonious Monk and the Modern Jazz Quartet. The archives thus hold a treasure trove of mid-60s jazz and, thankfully, the 35 ...
Continue Reading...Album Showcase
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