Jazz Articles
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GoGo Penguin: Necessary Fictions
by Geno Thackara
What exactly is the entity known as GoGo Penguin? After several recordings developing a niche they call “acoustic electronica"--an amorphous recipe of rock-and techno-oriented hooks played on jazz instruments in real time--one might have thought we had the answer to that question with the eponymous GoGo Penguin (Blue Note, 2020). Like many self-titled albums, it made a clear statement of identity with a defining sound. Then again, it was soon followed by a companion remix album (Blue Note, 2021) of ...
Continue ReadingJo-Yu Chen: Rendezvous - Jazz Meets Beethoven, Tchaikovsky & More
by Frank Housh
New York-based pianist and composer Jo-Yu Chen treats the great composers like most jazz musicians treat the Great American Songbook: a familiar musical foundation upon which to build a musical style. Chen trained at Juilliard but was seduced by jazz's siren song. Her first four albums: Obsession (Sony Music, 2011), Incomplete Soul (Sony Music, 2012), Stranger (Sony Music, 2014) and Savage Beauty (Sony Music, 2019) featured her compositions before she engaged the classical canon with Schubert & Mozart: ...
Continue ReadingJo-Yu Chen: Rendezvous: Jazz Meets Beethoven, Tchaikovsky & More
by Dan McClenaghan
Pianist Jo-Yu Chen's artistic mission can be described in her words: “When the music is right, it brings us back to the true essence of music, beyond labels and boundaries." But a discussion of labels and boundaries is necessary when addressing her album Rendezvous: Jazz Meets Beethoven, Tchaikovsky & More. First, some background: Chen has established a top-level jazz career since moving from her native Taiwan to New York City at age 16 to study at ...
Continue ReadingHamilton de Holanda & Gonzalo Rubalcaba: Collab
by Katchie Cartwright
Collab, the duo album from Cuban jazz pianist Gonzalo Rubalcaba and Brazilian choro mandolinist Hamilton de Holanda, is a sparkling collaboration between two contemporary masters of rhythm and improvisation. On the wings of a finely calibrated beat and a pliable form, they present 11 selections, adding new harmonic hues to the familiar, stretching, fracturing and reconstituting the given. Their experiences and tastes are wide ranging and divergent, but they meet--seemingly effortlessly--on the Latin jazz corner. Holanda composed the ...
Continue ReadingSenri Oe: Class of '88
by Neil Duggan
Imagine a superstar musician, someone along the lines of Ed Sheeran perhaps. Then imagine him giving up his lifestyle and commercial success just to re-awaken his love for the jazz musicians of his youth. You may think that was a difficult story to believe, but with J-Pop superstar, Senri Oe, that is exactly what happened. With 45 hit singles, numerous albums and a TV career, he had achieved mega-star status in Japan and had the celebrity lifestyle to match. At ...
Continue ReadingTriosence: Hidden Beauty
by David Bruggink
Triosence may not yet be a household name among jazz aficionados in the United States, but since the turn of the millennium, they have become a fixture of the German jazz scene. In addition to performing internationally, they take a distinctly cosmopolitan approach to their sound. Past albums have shown the trio intermingling aromas of Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East, and Hidden Beauty is no different in that respect. However, its compositions are the group's most taut and ...
Continue ReadingJo-Yu Chen: Savage Beauty
by Dan McClenaghan
The cover art of pianist Jo-Yu Chen's fourth album, Savage Beauty, is provocative and beautiful. So is the music. There is a sense of a “stepping up of the game," in terms of public persona and artistry. Chen has always taken the physical product—the hard copy of her CDs—seriously, beginning with her debut, Obsession (Sony Music Taiwan, 2009), through Incomplete Soul (Sony Music, 2012), then Stranger (Okeh, 2014). On Savage Beauty she embraces an over-the-top glamor mode in this regard, ...
Continue ReadingBob Dylan: More Blood, More Tracks: The Bootleg Series Vol. 14
by Eric Gudas
The challenge of finding something original to say about Bob Dylan's Blood on the Tracks (1975), the mother of all comeback albums, baffles even the most steely-eyed critic. But Sony has made the task easier with More Blood, More Tracks, the unfortunately titled, overpriced, but nonetheless revelatory fourteenth entry in the Bootleg Series. The six-disc Deluxe Edition contains all extant tracks for the album, recorded in 1974 over four September days in New York and two late December days in ...
Continue ReadingThe Jimi Hendrix Experience: Electric Ladyland 50th Anniversary Deluxe Edition
by Doug Collette
Given the voluminous prior excavations of Jimi Hendrix' vault, the producers of and contributors to the Jimi Hendrix Experience's Electric Ladyland 50th Anniversary Deluxe Edition deserve some kudos. This 3-CD plus Blu-ray set compares favorably to similarly-conceived archive presentations released coincidental to it, specifically More Blood, More Tracks (Legacy Music, 2018), Vol. 14 of The Bootleg Series of Bob Dylan and the 50th Anniversary editions of The Beatles (Apple, 1968) a/k/a 'The White Album.' Yet even as this ...
Continue ReadingTill Brönner / Dieter Ilg: Nightfall
by Karl Ackermann
Trumpeter Till Brönner is widely lauded in his native Germany and throughout Europe. He has had broad success not only as a jazz composer and musician but also in film music, pop and country genres. Brönner has recorded eighteen albums as a leader and worked with Monty Alexander, Dave Brubeck, Al Foster, Joachim Kühn, Nils Landgren, James Moody, Aki Takase, Ernie Watts and many other noteworthy artists. On Nightfall, he is paired with countryman and bassist Dieter Ilg whose sole ...
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