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Mark Turner Quartet: Live At The Village Vanguard
by Pat Youngspiel
Mark Turner's Live At The Village Vanguard follows a year after the saxophonist's critically acclaimed second quartet offering for the ECM label Return From The Stars (2022) and features the same group, containing live cuts of the entirety of that record. The title track “Return From The Stars," “Terminus," “Bridgetown," “Nigeria 2," “Lincoln Heights," “It's Not Alright With Me," “Wasteland" and “Unnacceptable" are taken from the album and given new guises in these vibrant live renditions. Also included are “Brother ...
read moreLeap Day Trio: Live at The Cafe Bohemia
by Jerome Wilson
Drummer Matt Wilson and tenor saxophonist Jeff Lederer have worked on many projects together, over a thirty-year period, covering everything from Christmas songs to the poetry of Carl Sandburg. This particular album finds them in a stripped-down trio, playing some of their most intense music ever, live at New York's reopened Cafe Bohemia. The trio's third member is bassist Mimi Jones, a recent acquaintance of both men, who fits right in with their freewheeling dialogues. Lederer blows with ...
read moreMatt Wilson: Live at The Cafe Bohemia
by Mike Jurkovic
From its modest opening in 1955 until its closing in 1960, 15 Barrow Street in Greenwich Village, aka Cafe Bohemia, housed such progressive jazz creators as Oscar Pettiford, Horace Silver and Kenny Dorham. Charlie Parker, who lived across the street, was booked to open the club and play for drinks but passed away before his run began. Cannonball Adderley made his New York debut there sitting in for Pettiford's regular sax man Jerome Richardson. A slew of hydrogen hot discs, ...
read moreThe Burton/McPherson Trio: The Summit Rock Session at Seneca Village
by Jack Bowers
The Burton/McPherson Trio consists of tenor saxophonist Abraham Burton, drummer Eric McPherson and bassist Dezron Douglas. Why it isn't called the Burton/McPherson/Douglas Trio is anyone's guess; the hope is that bassist Douglas' feelings weren't too badly hurt by the omission. He may have found solace in the outer jacket's addendum, “Featuring Dezron Douglas." In any case, this is the trio recorded live in June 2021 at Summit Rock in Seneca Village, an historic mostly African-American settlement in New York City's ...
read moreJason Palmer: Live From Summit Rock In Seneca Village
by Jack Bowers
With Covid-19 generally having had its way in recent years, shuttering many venues at which jazz musicians were accustomed to performing, it is a pleasure to hear an actual concert with a real live audience--even if the group is a piano-less quartet striving to hold its listeners' interest through five extended numbers whose collective playing time is over an hour. Trumpeter Jason Palmer's ensemble was recorded outdoors in May 2021 at the historic Seneca Village site in New York City's ...
read moreJason Palmer: Live From Summit Rock In Seneca Village
by Mark Corroto
It must have been a feeling of great happiness and triumph in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic for musicians to actually perform for an audience. A live, in-person audience that is, not a Zoom session from a home studio. That joyous feeling is quite evident on Jason Palmer's Live From Summit Rock in Seneca Village recorded in May of 2021 in Central Park. This release is the trumpeter's third for Giant Step Arts and his fifth with ...
read moreMichael Thomas: Event Horizon
by Jerome Wilson
Jimmy Katz seems to really be onto something with his Giant Step Arts label. Begun in 2018, the label has established a tradition of recording live performances by modern jazz musicians given complete freedom of repertoire and personnel. That approach has produced several outstanding releases including, earlier this year, The Concert: 12 Musings For Isabella, (Giant Step Arts, 2020) by trumpeter Jason Palmer, who also appears on the label's latest release, this time as a sideman for alto saxophonist Michael ...
read moreEric Alexander: Leap of Faith
by Friedrich Kunzmann
Acclaimed saxophonist Eric Alexander needs no special introduction. His pioneering work in the jazz world has been an inspiration to many of his peers since the early 90s. On this special chordless endeavour—featuring the chops of Doug Weiss on bass and drummer Jonathan Blake whose own recording in a very similar chordless constellation was likewise recently documented on the Giant Steps Arts label to high critical praise—Alexander makes a giant leap into somewhat uncharted territory for him and is rewarded ...
read moreEric Alexander: Leap of Faith
by Jack Bowers
Renowned tenor saxophonist Eric Alexander's Leap of Faith stems in part from the decision (hesitantly made) to perform in a trio setting without piano—hardly an uncommon arrangement these days but one that Alexander, a shining light on the New York music scene for more than two decades, has rarely explored, either in live gigs or on more than forty-plus albums as leader of his own groups. Also, Leap of Faith was recorded live (no safety net) at New York City's ...
read moreJohnathan Blake: Trion
by Friedrich Kunzmann
The names making up this trio really don't need further explanation, seeing how they belong to some of the leading jazz musicians in their respective fields: for Trion , drummer and composer Johnathan Blake relies on the adventurousness of the highly acclaimed bass virtuoso Linda May Han Oh and saxophonist Chris Potter, who together form a chordless entity. The democratic fashion in which the three interact with each other here was initially supposed to be captured by naming the group ...
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