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Jozef Dumoulin: A Fender Rhodes Solo
by Eyal Hareuveni
Belgian keyboards player Jozef Dumoulin describes his new solo album, his first solo album, as the the first solo album in the history of the electric piano, the Fender Rhodes. It is also a culmination of a long exploratory journey into the various, weird, eccentric sonic qualities of this vintage instrument, enhanced with electronic effects. The versatile Dumoulin developed a highly personal voice on the keyboards, including the Fender Rhodes, that always flirted with experimental sounds, ...
read moreEric Le Lann: I Remember Chet
by Jeff Dayton-Johnson
French trumpeter Eric Le Lann has a bit part in Bertrand Tavernier's 1986 film Round Midnight, the story of a French jazz fan's friendship with wayward American jazz musician Dale Turner, played by tenor saxophonist Dexter Gordon. Le Lann plays a French jazz trumpeter--not much of a stretch. More to the point, the film's story mirrored, however approximately, an episode in his own life, in which Le Lann befriended the expatriate Chet Baker during the latter's troubled final decade.
read moreManu Codjia / Geraldine Laurent / Christophe Marguet: Looking For Parker
by Jeff Dayton-Johnson
It's very much a trio of equals that recorded Looking For Parker, but alto saxophonist Géraldine Laurent sometimes muscles her way out front. This is partly just the nature of the horn, and partly because she plays the same instrument as Charlie Parker, to whose music the record is dedicated. And most of all, Laurent, more than her band mates, clearly derives from the bebop lineage initiated by Parker.The record begins, almost literally, looking for Parker in the ...
read moreMagic Malik: Alternate Steps
by Jeff Dayton-Johnson
Flutist Malik Mezzadri grew up on the Caribbean island of Guadeloupe, and moved to France to study at the conservatory in Marseille when he was 17. There he would win the first prize in flute; for more than twenty years, his subsequent idiosyncratic career as Magic Malik has seen him energetically flitting about the territory where jazz gives way to other musical forms: contemporary classical, pop, various kinds of experimentation. He has often organized his own groups' music in the ...
read moreGabriel Zufferey: Contemplation
by Jeff Dayton-Johnson
Jazz mashups are in the air. First, pianist Robert Glasper artfully wove pianist Herbie Hancock's “Maiden Voyage" together with Radiohead's “Everything in its Right Place" on the his In My Element (Blue Note, 2007). The Jazz Punks' raucous Smashups (Foam @ the Mouth, 2012) mashed up saxophonist Sonny Rollins with guitarist Jimi Hendrix, and Led Zeppelin with trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie (not to mention John Coltrane with John Coltrane). Finally, pianist Gabriel Zufferey's Contemplation includes two particularly subtle additions to the ...
read moreJerome Sabbagh: Plugged In
by Glenn Astarita
New York City-based tenor saxophonist Jerome Sabbagh has made the rounds by performing with a who's who of modern jazz artists amid his flourishing career as a solo artist. Possessing a stout tone and commanding presence, the artist's lyrically resplendent phraseology is often a good fit for a variety of jazz settings, including mainstream and the outside realm. With his acoustic-electric quartet, Sabbagh enjoys a notable affiliation with Belgian keyboard virtuoso Jozef Dumoulin, who spawns a polytonal, electronics vista, complete ...
read moreJerome Sabbagh featuring Jozef Dumoulin: Plugged In
by Jeff Dayton-Johnson
Plugged In is an immensely appealing record and an artistic success. The source of that success is the revelatory combination of the highly individual--and at first blush, not necessarily compatible--sounds of saxophonist Jerome Sabbagh and keyboardist Jozef Dumoulin.Sabbagh has had a string of critically-acclaimed albums, notably including North (Fresh Sound New Talent, 2005) and Pogo (Sunnyside, 2007), both of which featured guitarist Ben Monder. On these and other records, Sabbagh comes across as a poster child for the ...
read moreNico Gori / Fred Hersch: Da Vinci
by Jeff Dayton-Johnson
Clarinetist Nico Gori and pianist Fred Hersch both played the North Sea Jazz Festival in July 2010 and struck up a friendship riding together on the bus from the performance site to the hotel. Soon thereafter they began a series of duo gigs in Europe and New York. The studio recording Da Vinci captures the strong element of fellowship between the Italian and the American.Gori is most visible as member of pianist Stefano Bollani's group. Hersch, meanwhile, has ...
read moreGuillaume de Chassy: Silences
by Jeff Dayton-Johnson
Pianist Guillaume de Chassy insists that Silences is inspired by the example of clarinetist Jimmy Giuffre's late-1950s trio recordings. To be sure, like those records, this album is marked by intimacy and introspection, a strong clarinet sound and no drummer. But Silences, recorded at a French abbey, doesn't sound much like Giuffre's records--nor indeed, like much of jazz, at first blush.It's not at first clear just what this piano-clarinet-bass formation is up to. The helpfully titled “Birth of ...
read moreMajid Bekkas: Mabrouk
by Jeff Dayton-Johnson
Bekkas is a leading Gnawa musician who sings and plays the oud, as well as acoustic guitar and guembri, the three-stringed bass-like instrument that provides the trance-inducing pulse of Gnawa music. The Gnawa, in turn, are spiritual brotherhoods formed in Morocco among slaves brought there from sub-Saharan Africa over the centuries. Bekkas has collaborated with a number of jazz players, including saxophonist Archie Shepp, pianist Joachim Kuhn and drummer Hamid Drake, concentrating on the more adventurous end of the jazz ...
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