Articles by Tyran Grillo
Listening: Music, Movement, Mind
by Tyran Grillo
Listening: Music, Movement, Mind Nik Bärtsch 352 Pages ISBN: 9783037786703 Lars Müller Publishers 2021 If Swiss pianist Nik Bärtsch, best known as the mastermind--or perhaps, more fittingly, the beginnermind--behind “Ronin," an ever-evolving interpretive organism for his modular compositions, has long seemed an enigmatic figure, then Listening: Music, Movement, Mind may well serve as the missing link between the man and the mystery. Beneath the disarming subtitle “A Useless Guide for Everything" lies ...
Continue ReadingNik Bärtsch’s Ronin with Sumie Kaneko at MIT
by Tyran Grillo
Nik Bärtsch's Ronin with Sumie Kaneko Thomas Tull Concert HallMassachusetts Institute of TechnologyBoston, MAOctober 4, 2025 At the close of a week-long residency at MIT--where Swiss pianist Nik Bärtsch served as both muse and subject to a group of “freaky scientists," as he affectionately called them--something extraordinary came to fruition. The program had seen Bärtsch immersed in neurological studies, AI-driven musical experiments and a collaborative workshop between his band Ronin and the university's own ...
Continue ReadingLucian Ban and Mat Maneri at the Northampton Center for the Arts
by Tyran Grillo
Lucian Ban & Mat Maneri Northampton Center for the ArtsNorthampton, Massachusetts October 1, 2025 In the early 20th century and throughout his life, composer Béla Bartók endeavored to document the folk songs of Hungary and beyond. Of the approximately 10,000 examples he preserved on wax cylinders and later transcribed, a significant handful reflected the dying traditions of his native land, along with the people and places in which they might have been consigned were it ...
Continue ReadingProducer Sun Chung: Always Listening for a Story
by Tyran Grillo
On April 28, 2021, a quiet masterpiece marked the end of an era--and the beginning of another. Hanamichi was to be the last studio recording of Japanese pianist Masabumi Kikuchi, who died in 2015, two years after its creation. And yet, while its sweeter overtones struck balance in the bitterness of his absence, the album marked the birth of Red Hook Records, an independent label run by producer Sun Chung. Kikuchi's uncanny ability to tell a story was an organic ...
Continue ReadingPhil Freeman Talks Jazz in the 21st Century
by Tyran Grillo
If music journalism had an award for honesty, it would belong firmly on the shelf of Phil Freeman alongside his latest book, Ugly Beauty. And if I had a choice about the design of said award, I might opt for a gold-plated boxing glove to symbolize the gut punches his words deliver. Not because his approach is violent, but because his tough love for the music makes us stronger. Like the music he describes, the book eschews pandering appreciation in ...
Continue ReadingPatricia Barber: Clique
by Tyran Grillo
These time-honored songs, lovingly curated, arranged, and performed by pianist/vocalist Patricia Barber and her band, are at last seeing the light of day when the world needs them more than ever. Pristinely recorded, Clique assembles what began as encores to live performances into an experience all its own. The album comes out of the same sessions that gave us Higher (see review for All About Jazz here), which immersed the fortunate listener in a world shaped by art song and ...
Continue ReadingDaniel Bennett Group: New York Nerve
by Tyran Grillo
"This is not a pandemic record, but it is," says Daniel Bennett about his latest album. What might come across as a paradoxical statement is, from the multi-instrumentalist and composer's lips, a poignant assessment of his creative turn. “I didn't go on pause at all. I did my best as a human, using common sense while taking the blessings I had in my life. I didn't want to be consumed by fear. No disrespect, of course, to everyone who has ...
Continue ReadingRhiannon Giddens & Francesco Turrisi: Trading Comforts
by Tyran Grillo
While Rhiannon Giddens and Francesco Turrisi are often billed as a vocalist and multi-instrumentalist, respectively, on their latest Nonesuch release, They're Calling Me Home, those categorizations are interchangeable. To be sure, Giddens' voice is a central pillar of the album's tent-like structure, into which she and Turrisi invite lifetimes' worth of emotional timelines. But her viola and array of banjos house histories of their own. Their voices are sobering reminders that all the hatred and strife we as a global ...
Continue ReadingHristo Vitchev: Of Light and Shadows
by Tyran Grillo
Guitarist Hristo Vitchev reconvenes his synergistic quartet with pianist Jasnam Daya Singh, bassist Dan Robbins and drummer Mike Shannon for a set of nine originals, each deeper than the last. It's the kind of session that happens perhaps once in a decade, where every detail dovetails into the next without the merest hint of force. The title track is a joyous opener, practicing what it preaches by virtue of its gradations. It exudes passionate musical ideas and exposition. ...
Continue ReadingMason Razavi & Bennett Roth-Newell: After You
by Tyran Grillo
Guitarist Mason Razavi and pianist Bennett Roth-Newell place years of collaborative experience under the microscope in this studio album. The performances, as wide-ranging as they are intimate, comprise a generous handful of original dough with a few familiar tunes thrown in for leavening. In the latter vein, we are treated to three slices of optimism, starting with Clifford Brown's “Joy Spring." In addition to setting the tone for a set of sometimes-whimsical crosstalk, it showcases the duo's ability to unravel ...
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