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Paul Kuhn: The LA Session
by Richard J Salvucci
Paul Kuhn (1928-2013) was a German jazz pianist who was well known in his own country, but much less so in the United States. All things considered, given that he spent the formative year of his adolescence in Nazi Germany, he was probably lucky to have survived at all. The Nazis, like most authoritarians, frowned on swing and jazz. They considered it the product of a degraded race and gateway drug of sorts to all sorts of perversions of which ...
read moreNocturnal Four: Light In The World
by Dan Bilawsky
A band of the night embraces light. It's an equipoise in interests that propels this outing to great depths and heights. Croatian guitarist Ratko Zjaca, long a proponent for cross-cultural exchange in music, uses this dark yet illuminating platform to sow the seeds of accord with a band of brothers from different motherlands. He reunites with Italian saxophonist Stefano Bedetti and Slovenian organist Renato Chicco, who proved to be his perfect match(es) on Life on Earth (In ...
read moreHendrik Meurkens: Cobb's Pocket
by Nicholas F. Mondello
It may be posited that what Louis Armstrong was to the trumpet, Toots Thielemans was to the mouthorgan. With Thielemans now blowing in the Upper Room, the field is open to aspiring and worthy replacements. Hendrik Meurkens fits that bill appropriately and is a leading contender, for sure. Like his aforementioned hero, Meurkens is not only a superior harmonica player, he is, like Thielemans, a multi-instrument-playing musician. Cobb's Pocket, a very fine effort, has Meurkens fronting a ...
read moreHendrik Meurkens: Cobb's Pocket
by Dan Bilawsky
Is there anything more satisfying than the simmer-and-swing sonics of an organ combo on the move? How about one fronted by one of jazz's premiere harmonic players and backed by one of the most distinguished drummers in the music's history? Following up their successful meeting on Harmonicus Rex (Self-Produced, 2016), Hendrik Meurkens and nonagenarian icon Jimmy Cobb join forces to deliver a beautiful set of music that alternately cooks, smolders and seduces. And with guitarist Peter Bernstein and organist Mike ...
read moreZZ Quartet: Beyond the Lines
by Glenn Astarita
Three Europeans and celebrated American drummer Adam Nussbaum stir up some chutzpah via the guitar-accordion based format. In recent times the accordion's role in jazz-centric vernaculars has been expanding. And while this quartet doesn't invent a newfound genre, its spunky and articulate disposition, containing all original compositions engender a sophisticated outlook. With alternating tempos and several speedy unison choruses by guitarist Ratko Zjaca and accordionist Simone Zanchini, the band veers into changeable dimensions, largely executed within a sprightly modus operandi ...
read moreZZ Quartet: Beyond the Lines
by Dan McClenaghan
The group is called the ZZ Quartet, and no, it is not an expansion of the famed blues rock trio from Texas, ZZ Top. Beyond the Lines is the brainchild of the leaders--the Zs of the ZZ Quartet--accordion master Simone Zanchini and guitarist Ratko Zjaca. And their music isn't rock, though elements of the genre surface, in Zjaca's oft-imes snappy guitar licks, or when Zanchini addresses the “ah-look-at-all-the-lonely-people" bit of the Beatles' melody on the tranquil “River Spirit."Anytime ...
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