Jazz Articles

Ryuichi Sakamoto: Opus

by Nenad Georgievski
August 14, 2024

Ryuichi Sakamoto's final album, Opus,, serves as the soundtrack for the documentary of the same name. In his final weeks, Sakamoto, an Oscar-winning composer, was filmed at the piano by his son, Neo Sora. This album stands as a stark, emotional farewell, highlighting the remarkable career of a man who profoundly influenced the world of music. Sakamoto, a luminary in contemporary music, known for his groundbreaking work as a composer, performer, and innovator, has left an indelible mark ...

Ryuichi Sakamoto: async Remodels

by Nenad Georgievski
February 17, 2018

There is a legend about the vigorous dance of Shiva, the Hindu god of destruction and creative renewal. This endless and vigorous dance is called “Tandava," and with it Shiva destroys the world. With each new cycle, out of the scattered elements, a new world is reconstructed. This dance and act is the source of the cycle of creation, preservation, and dissolution. In a similar manner, what most remixers have been doing to songs or pieces of music can be ...

Mark Orton: Nebraska

by Mark F. Turner
November 25, 2013

Even without seeing director Alexander Payne's critically acclaimed motion picture Nebraska, the soundtrack evokes a sense of poignant storytelling, motion, and depth. Multi-instrumentalist and film scorer Mark Orton vividly captures the essence of the film's story about a belligerent old man--performed by Bruce Dern who earned “Best Actor" for the role at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival--who is relentlessly determined to collect, in person by the way, the unlikely one million dollar sweepstakes prize he is convinced he's won.

Bruno Evin / Djamel Hammadi / Julio Black: Man Ray Volume 1

by Aaron Basiliere
May 11, 2009

Man Ray Volume 1 finds Bruno Evin, Djamel Hammadi, and Julio Black, three of Europe's most prolific DJs, taking acid jazz, ambient and electronica to new heights with a flawless mix of influential music that spans the globe. With an arsenal of differentiated rhythms and harmonies that cut across cultures, Ervin, Hammadi and Black showcase some of the most groundbreaking acts on the world-dance circuit, and produce a set of new-age chill-out standards that proves to be infectious and groovy ...

Richard Galliano: Love Day: Los Angeles Sessions

by Jakob Baekgaard
January 10, 2009

The beauty of music is in its ability to compress. A whole lifetime of emotions can be contained in a song. Music, in a way, is the most abstract way of speaking and yet it is also the most direct utterance one can think of. The same can be said of love. Love and music transcend time while still being situated in history. Love that's here today can be gone tomorrow.

Richard Galliano's Love Day can be heard ...

Richard Galliano / Brussels Jazz Orchestra: Ten Years Ago

by Chris May
January 7, 2009

An energetic recording artist who since 2007 has been averaging three albums a year, accordionist Richard Galliano appears even more prolific because of the quick-fire diversity of contexts in which he places himself--solo, with his Tangaria quartet, with European and American jazz groups ranging from duos to larger lineups, and with strings. Between them, Galliano's albums have embraced tango, jazz, chanson and the classics. In a long career as leader however, he has never recorded with a big band--until now ...

Richard Galliano: Love Day: Los Angeles Sessions

by Chris May
October 23, 2008

French-Italian accordionist Richard Galliano began recording for the Milan label in the mid-2000s, since when he's released two tango-based albums, Luz Negra (Milan, 2007) and Live In Marciac (Milan, 2007), made with his Tangaria Quartet. Galliano's Love Day: Los Angeles Session finds him returning to another love, new musette, a jazz-inflected recalibration of the bal-musette cafe music developed by French and Italian musicians in late 19th century Paris.Love Day: Los Angeles Sessions is bal-musette with a further twist ...

Richard Galliano & Tangaria Quartet: Live In Marciac 2006

by Chris May
September 25, 2007

Accordionist Richard Galliano's Tangaria Quartet made its studio debut earlier this year with the thrilling Luz Negra (Milan Records, 2007), recorded in Brazil. The group's warm-up gig for those sessions happened a month earlier, in August 2006, at France's Marciac Festival, and, happily, the performance was recorded.

Like the studio set, Live In Marciac 2006 is a fiery, foot-on-the-accelerator mix of valse musettes, straight-ahead jazz, tunes derived from European and South American folk songs, a handful of tangos ...

Richard Galliano: Luz Negra

by Chris May
February 20, 2007

A little accordion can go a long way. The instrument's blowsy, wheezing sound, perfectly fashioned to express sadness and tears, can quickly become a downer, and it takes a player with unusual gifts to transcend all that. It is no accident that two styles intimately associated with the accordion, Argentinian tango and French musette, frequently deal with loss and bad luck. Je ne regrette rien? I don't think so.

Richard Galliano has recorded several tristesse fests in his time, but ...

Flags of Our Fathers: Various Artists

by Jack Bowers
November 29, 2006

I don't ordinarily review film scores, but the patriotic epic Flags of Our Fathers, about the raising of the American flag on Iwo Jima and the memorable photograph that changed the mood and momentum of World War II, has a jazz/swing pedigree of sorts with music by jazz aficionado Clint Eastwood, orchestrations by conductor Lennie Niehaus, recreations of songs from the era by Michael Stevens and Clint's son, bassist Kyle Eastwood, and one jazz classic, “Summit Ridge Drive, by Artie ...