Jazz Articles

Henri Texier: Chance

by Friedrich Kunzmann
June 17, 2020

French double bassist Henri Texier gained prominence back in the early 1960s, when he was working in Paris playing alongside American expatriates such as Bud Powell or Johnny Griffin. Over the years he has played with many international greats and proven a prolific composer as well as an unparalleled foundation on bass. Yet, one could argue that his best work was created only since 2010, in collaboration with his French quintet. Featuring his son Sébastien Texier on saxophones and clarinet, ...

Julien Lourau: Quartet Saigon

by Bruce Lindsay
December 29, 2009

Marseilles-based saxophonist Julien Lourau brought Quartet Saigon together in 2007, and both the group and album are named for the city where they made their debut performance: Saigon, Vietnam. Quartet Saigon is an inventive and intelligent album and shows that a classic four-piece with talent and imagination can still create original tunes. The album consists mainly of original compositions, with the exception of one standard, the closing “A House is Not a Home." The Burt Bacharach/Hal David ...

David Krakauer: Bubbemeises: Lies My Gramma Told Me

by Kurt Gottschalk
February 28, 2007

Composer/klezmer and classical clarinetist David Krakauer has accrued a nice string of releases over the last five years, working with the under-distributed French Label Bleu imprint. 2001's A Hot One went toward the jazzy end of klez and The Twelve Tribes, from the following year, punched it up with a bit of a rock edge. But the surprise came in 2004, when he augmented his long-standing Klezmer Madness! band to include jazz guitar, accordion and sampler. The impact of the ...

Steve Coleman and Five Elements: Weaving Symbolics

by Jeff Stockton
February 8, 2007

Philosopher, conceptualist, theoretician and supremely original alto saxophonist Steve Coleman has issued more than twenty albums over the last twenty years under his own name, all of which helped perpetuate his notion of the M-Base (macro-basic array of spontaneous extemporization) collective. Less a musicians' club than a way of thinking about music creation, Coleman and his band employ M-Base to combine structure with improvisation on Weaving Symbolics and deliver music that fuses funk, soul, world beat and jazz.

David Krakauer & Socalled with Klezmer Madness!: Bubbemeises: Lies My Gramma Told Me

by Matt Cibula
December 12, 2006

This snappy little set combines some funky klezmer jazz with an intelligent electronic/hip-hop perspective. Does that sentence get your blood racing? It should, because there are a hell of a lot of amazing things being done in klezmer music these days, from traditional stuff to the avant-est of the avant-garde. Here, clarinetist David Krakauer and his amazing Klezmer Madness! band go nuts in a collaboration with Jewish rapper/producer Socalled to yield one of the nicest, tightest, weirdest things of the ...

Bunky Green: Another Place

by Norman Weinstein
November 24, 2006

This release is a welcome reminder that Bunky Green is alive and well--and one of the dozen most important alto sax players in the country. In spite of notable associations with bands led by Charles Mingus, Sonny Stitt and Yusef Lateef, Green's available catalog until this release consisted of a single disc, Healing the Pain (Delos, 1990). But Green was befriended by Steve Coleman, and we have this recording as a result. Part of Coleman's genius is getting talent, ranging ...

Bojan Z: Xenophonia

by Ian Patterson
July 22, 2006

Bojan Z's latest release for Label Bleu is perhaps his most satisfying work to date, showcasing his considerable compositional skills whilst allowing equal representation to the fine musicians who excel throughout.

The opening track, “Ulaz, is a definite highlight. Hypnotic drums, however gentle, with brushes and washing cymbals, a heavily plucked acoustic bass pulse, and a kaval (a Balkan flute) float ethereally in the background like some ancient spirit being evoked. It is not until a minute and ...

Steve Coleman and Five Elements: Lucidarium

by Rex Butters
October 21, 2005

Steve Coleman's latest tablet from the mountain top finds him back with a large group performing even larger conceptual compositions, augmented by voices and rappers. Besides group improvisations, Coleman also abandons pitch in places and continues to work within signature structures and rhythms. Gathering a stellar group of musicians while obsessively pushing himself and everyone else past imagined limits creates a uniquely inspired program of music fraught with meaning and melody.

His bright, warm alto sparks a brief quartet with ...

David Krakauer & Socalled with Klezmer Madness!: Bubbemeises: Lies My Gramma Told Me

by Eyal Hareuveni
October 6, 2005

Clarinet master David Krakauer is one of the original, free-minded heroes of the new klezmer revival, a great and daring instrumentalist who keeps expanding his musical language. Bubbemeises: Lies My Gramma Told Me, a collaboration between Canadian DJ and sampler man Josh Goldin, aka Socalled, and Krakauer's trusty and impeccable unit, Klezmer Madness!, retains the festive and merry mood of klezmer music but adds a hot mix of jazz, funk, rock, and hip-hop. This infectious and fun-filled brew is so ...

Steve Coleman: Lucidarium

by Norman Weinstein
September 16, 2004

Steve Coleman Lucidarium Label Bleu 2004

Jazz Composer and Performer as Philosopher...

These thoughts were triggered by the impossibility for me of reviewing the notable new album Lucidarium by Steve Coleman and his band, the Five Elements. Normally, someone who has spent over twenty years reviewing jazz albums would not make a big fuss in print about the inability to write an album review. In this instance, the feeling of being inadequate to the ...