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Dock in Absolute: [Re]Flekt
![Read "Dock in Absolute: [Re]Flekt" reviewed by Brian Morton](https://s3.amazonaws.com/allaboutjazz/coverart/large/7c9de437021a8f91187845967a95dfdf.jpg)
by Brian Morton
I wonder if I'd get away with it? An old friend was famous for his ability to turn out newspaper columns at lightning speed and with no notice, often after a generous lunch that had stretched on until near deadline time. He'd gruffly concede that yes, that's what they paid him for, yank out a few sheets of typing paper and without so much as a musing glance upwards, start pounding the keys. Ten, fifteen minutes later, the sub-editors were ...
Continue ReadingFrancesco Bearzatti and Federico Casagrande: And Then Winter Came Again
by Brian Morton
This liner-note begins, unusually, with a charitable appeal. Music reviewers and critics labour in obscure conditions, but this is not an appeal for better pay or more respect. Many of these poor souls suffer from a deeply embarrassing ailment that directly bears on their ability to function at all. As first the co-author and later sole author of a very large jazz reference book, I've had the symptoms for years. The condition is known to the very few doctors who ...
Continue ReadingMichel Reis: For A Better Tomorrow
by Brian Morton
It's always possible to get hung up on definitions, or metaphors. In modern jazz terms the most famous description of a piano is probably Cecil Taylor's “88 tuned drums," a clever way of characterising the instrument's percussive power and of removing it from the strong gravitational pull of European art music. I've always preferred Leigh Hunt's lovely description of the piano as a harp in a box. It's not clear whether Hunt meant it seriously, or as a sly put-down. ...
Continue ReadingEleonora Strino: Matilde
by Brian Morton
There isn't much training around for young arts interviewers, but one bit of advice that is usually thrown out is never to ask “Where do you get your ideas?" It's a seemingly banal question that can only attract banal--and sometimes very sarcastic--answers. And yet sometimes, in context, it's exactly the right question to ask. More often than one might expect, novelists, poets, and musicians are more than happy to say that the new body of work being considered began in ...
Continue ReadingHindsight: Enrico Pieranunzi, Marc Johnson and Joey Baron
by Brian Morton
Sometimes we're reduced to throwing down old bones and seeing what messages they deliver back. Maybe noticed at the time, but the recording of Hindsight, by the trio of maestro Enrico Pieranunzi, master bassist Marc Johnson and time-lord Joey Baron took place almost exactly sixty years after one of the most famous jazz piano sessions of all. When most admirers think of Bill Evans, their minds go first to the famous Village Vanguard sessions of June 1961, with Scott LaFaro ...
Continue ReadingEleonora Strino: I Got Strings
by Ian Patterson
There comes a before-and-after moment in any jazz musician's career with their first album as a leader. For Neapolitan guitarist Elenora Strino, I Got Strings marks a transition of sorts, from band member on the projects of pianist Dado Moroni and saxophonist Emanuele Cisi, to headline grabber in her own right. In fairness, Strino has led her own trios since 2016, but it usually takes the solid currency of one's own album to make the wider world sit up and ...
Continue ReadingFilippo Vignato/Hank Roberts: Ghost Dance
by Ian Patterson
Usually the watering hole comes after a gig, but there would have been enough wine to float a ship at this concert by cellist Hank Roberts and trombonist Filippo Vignato, held as it was in the Vigne di Zamò Winery in North-Eastern Italy. The interplay between the veteran American and the younger Italian on these nine originals is so finely tuned, so intuitive, as to suggest total sobriety, at least at the time of the recording. Ghost Dance is their ...
Continue ReadingFabio Giachino: At The Edges Of The Horizon
by Don Phipps
The set of invigorating and hard-driving straight-ahead jazz tunes on Italian pianist and composer Fabio Giachino's At The Edges Of The Horizon offers non-stop interplay and flowing syncopation. There's a certain funky richness to the music, and Giachino's bandmates make the most of the flow of the music, highlighting the rhythmic variations with technical virtuosity. Giachino's own piano style is lyrical and only slightly abstract. He covers the keys easily, like a deer racing through the woods, and ...
Continue ReadingAntonio Sanchez: Bad Hombre
by Dan Bilawsky
Antonio Sanchez's drum score for Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) served as a game-changer in the film industry, completely upending notions of what a soundtrack can and can't be. But more importantly, it altered our collective viewpoint on what the art of solo drumming is capable of expressing. Pulling sound from nothing more than skins and cymbals, Sanchez managed to produce and reflect serious emotional content. So is it any surprise that the next phase of his evolutionary ...
Continue ReadingOregon: Lantern
by John Kelman
Despite having to replace percussionists a couple of times since its inception in 1970, Oregon's otherwise consistent lineup of reed/woodwind multi-instrumentalist Paul McCandless, guitarist/pianist/primary composer Ralph Towner and double bassist Glen Moore remained unchanged for forty-five years--surely some kind of record in the jazz world. And with current drummer/percussionist Mark Walker joining the group for 1997's Northwest Passage (Intuition), Oregon has, over the last two decades, enjoyed its longest-standing lineup. Until 2015, that is, when it was announced, ...
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