Jazz Articles
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Steve Hirsh: Root Causes
by Mark Corroto
Although Steve Hirsh's name appears on the masthead of Root Causes, you might not immediately recognize it as a drummer-led recording. Unlike the unmistakable leadership of Art Blakey, Elvin Jones, and Tony Williams, Hirsh leads with subtlety, functioning more as a selfless, responsive collaborator than a dominant force. The album features a classic piano trio format, with pianist Eri Yamamoto and bassist William Parker rounding out the ensemble. This trio forms three-quarters of the Sparks Quartet, led by ...
Continue ReadingRob Brown: Walkabout
by Fran Kursztejn
Despite spending the majority of his career as a side man for William Parker and Matthew Shipp, Rob Brown is perhaps the most recognizable alto saxophonist on the East Coast. Recognizable not because he is famous (far from it), but simply because he is rather difficult to mistake. His sound is abrasive, bellowing and free, oozing with a crooning full-force poignancy reminiscent of his late mentor Lee Konitz. Perhaps it is the singular presence of Charlie Parker in his oscillating ...
Continue ReadingMahakala Music: Murmuration
by Fran Kursztejn
"Birds from the east coast meet birds from the midwest," reads Mahakala Music's description for saxophonist Dave Sewelson's newest release. Sewelson himself is a bicoastal phenomenon: born in Oakland, then traipsing into the New York scene circa 1977. Like his frequent bandleader collaborator William Parker, he acts as a magnetic center to attract a variety of local and international performers alike. Murmuration's line-up consists of another fellow New Yorker-violinist Gabby Fluke-Mogul, and three Minneapolitans, bassist Anthony Cox, drummer Steve Hirsh ...
Continue ReadingMichael Bisio: NuMBq
by Mark Corroto
Michael Bisio borrows the phrase “and now for something completely different" from Monty Python's Flying Circus to describe his new quartet, NuMBq. Joining the bassist is longtime collaborator Jay Rosen on drums, along with two musicians traditionally rooted in classical music: violist Melanie Dyer and English horn player Marianne Osiel. With NuMBq, Bisio blurs the line between chamber music and jazz--but let's not confine this session to the Third Stream category. Early jazz-classical hybrids, such as Charlie Parker ...
Continue ReadingIvo Perelman, Chad Fowler, Reggie Workman and Andrew Cyrille: Embracing the Unknown
by Troy Dostert
Since founding Mahakala Music in 2019, saxophonist Chad Fowler has done as much as anyone to continue the spirit of unfettered free jazz, drawing on an illustrious roster which includes veterans such as William Parker, Matthew Shipp, Joe McPhee, Ivo Perelman and many others, with Fowler himself frequently appearing alongside them. The label is also doing a superb job of bringing together cross-generational assemblages of musicians, as on 2022's Alien Skin, which brought Shipp, Parker and Perelman together with Fowler, ...
Continue ReadingIvo Perelman / Chad Fowler / Reggie Workman / Andrew Cyrille: Embracing the Unknown
by Mark Corroto
Let's explore the title of saxophonist Ivo Perelman's latest release, Embracing the Unknown. His quartet with fellow saxophonist Chad Fowler, plus jazz legends Reggie Workman and Andrew Cyrille embrace, or welcome, adopt, and maybe better stated, champion the unknown. This exercise in instant composing guides listeners through the mysterious, the new, the novel, the undiscovered, i.e. the unknown. But then again, doesn't every Ivo Perelman recording embrace the unknown? With his one hundred plus (and counting) discography, the ...
Continue ReadingJeff Arnal / Curt Cloninger: Drum Major Instinct
by Glenn Astarita
Drum Major Instinct is an experimental music duo from Asheville, North Carolina. The duo consists of Jeff Arna, who plays drums & percussion, and Curt Cloninger, who works with modular synthesisers. Their debut release offers an entrancing blend of soundscapes which defy easy categorization. The album title emanates from a 1968 speech by Dr. Martin Luther King, referencing the 1952 homily ”Drum Major Instincts” by J. Wallace Hamilton which provides an underlying modus operandi for the album as a whole. ...
Continue ReadingMatthew Shipp: The Intrinsic Nature Of Shipp
by Karl Ackermann
In a broad-themed 2023 interview with All About Jazz, Matthew Shipp described The Intrinsic Nature Of Shipp as his “grand statement for who I am now." With this solo release, we have a time-stamp in the composer's constantly evolving portfolio. As we trace Shipp's music from his first solo work, Symbol Systems (No More Records, 1995), through a quarter century, a sense of composing and playing in the moment becomes career-defining. Shipp's musical explorations are location pins on terrains which ...
Continue ReadingIvo Perelman: Reed Rapture in Brooklyn
by Jeff Schwartz
Is this album fundamentally unreviewable? Are there jazz fans who do not immediately know if they need an 11-hour collection of 103 improvised duets between Ivo Perelman and a dozen saxophonists and clarinetists? It is at least describable. Perelman is faithful to his tenor, while his partners bring examples of nearly every type of saxophone, from soprillo to contrabass, as well as most of the clarinet family. Although all tracks are free improvisations, the default mode is ...
Continue ReadingIvo Perelman / Arun Ortiz / Lester St. Louis: Prophecy
by Mike Jurkovic
Movies run through our heads all the time and Prophecy, the latest excursion into the unruly unknown by tenor saxophonist and tireless creator Ivo Perelman and his two latest partners-in-crime, pianist Aruan Ortiz and cellist Lester St. Louis is just the soundtrack for them. Boisterous, disconcerting, consoling. Musically obtuse yet oddly accessible for the love scenes and elegies. Music restless for the reveal. Hypnotic themes for the terse encounters between lead characters or the silent parsing of the ...
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