Jazz Articles
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Alex Weiss: Most Don't Have Enough
by Robert Middleton
This album is really special. It doesn't sound like anything else and every song is engaging and interesting. The titles of the songs are also fascinating. Even the collage cover is great and seems to reflect the music. Tenor saxophonist Alex Weiss started writing Most Don't Have Enough during the pandemic and went deep into writing and practicing. Much of the inspiration came from Chris Speed, as Weiss is a big fan of his writing and his tone. ...
read moreEsthesis Quartet: Time Zones
by Jerome Wilson
The four members of Esthesis Quartet, flutist Elsa Nilsson, pianist Dawn Clement, bassist Emma Dayhuff and drummer Tina Raymond, each live in different parts of the United States, but, as this album shows, when they get together their playing has an easy and natural rapport. With flute as a lead instrument, the group sometimes have the cooler sound associated with West Coast jazz as on the breezy “Hollywood" and the gentle “First Light." However, over the course of ...
read moreEsthesis Quartet: Time Zones
by Jack Bowers
Time Zones is the second album by the Esthesis Quartet, comprised of four accomplished women, all whom do indeed reside in different time zones. Flutist Elsa Nilsson, originally from Sweden, lives in Brooklyn, NY; pianist/vocalist Dawn Clement makes her home in Denver, CO; bassist Emma Dayhuff lives in Chicago, drummer Tina Raymond in California, where Time Zones was recorded. The four first met at various festivals, conventions and other sessions around the country, drawn together by a ...
read moreShawn Lovato: Microcosms
by Troy Dostert
Bassist Shawn Lovato's debut album, Cycles of Animation (Skirl, 2017), possessed a conceptual sophistication that went far beyond an imaginative slice of creative jazz. The same is evident on Microcosms, an album that involves giving his terrific ensemble the chance to develop minute gestures into larger, more determinate shapes. The constant ebb and flow that results is compelling, with a sense of order that periodically takes hold amidst the individual members' freedom to find their own pathways to a common ...
read moreJames Gilmore: Decorating Time
by Jeff Kaliss
"You can find a song that goes with your vocabulary," guitarist James Gilmore has averred. It's not because his album's label, Ears and Eyes, is based in Buenos Aires that the opening title track of Decorating Time speaks in what feels like a new language, or at least a new dialect. Maybe it's something about North Carolina, where Gilmore, bassist Butler Knowles, and drummer Kassem Williams all live and record. That state, like Argentina's capitol city, is said to be ...
read moreJoaquin Muro: Contracara
by Mike Jurkovic
Recorded in the same sessions and presented (digitally only) as the B-side to his first album--the fully careening Oxymoron (ears&eyes, 2021)--Brazilian trumpeter Joaquin Muro, with his high powered, firebrand peer, tenor saxophonist Camila Nebbia wailing bravely at his side, sets Contracara ablaze. The music is at its overheating core is a fiery, free jazz rave-up that gleefully and unerringly provides an undisputed respite from the relentless information of our long, recent days. Be the musicians structured as a ...
read moreNoa Fort: Everyday Actions
by Jerome Wilson
Noa Fort is an Israeli-born pianist, vocalist and composer now living in New York City. She has worked as a music therapist and believes in using music as a healing force. That sentiment comes through in this CD of alternately stimulating and peaceful music. She sings on most of the tracks but only one has lyrics. On the rest her voice floats wordlessly over her piano and various combinations of trumpeter Josh Deutsch, bassist Dan Loomis and drummer Ronen Itzik. ...
read moreCamilia Nebbia: Colibri Rojo
by Mike Jurkovic
Tutored by none other than Marilyn Crispell and Tim Berne, young pioneering saxophonist Camila Nebbia cannot be held totally responsible for her flexible idiosyncrasies. Surely both elders must have mentioned their ideas of musical reflexiveness somewhere in the laboratory. Sketchy, skittish, lean and peerless, Nebbia rarely takes the chance to sweeten the pot. Instead she likes to stir, season, burn and bake whenever and whatever the musical moment presents. And they occur as often and as spontaneously on ...
read moreMichael Sarian: New Aurora
by Jerome Wilson
Trumpeter Michael Sarian leads two large-sized groups, The Chabones and The Big Chabones, that utilize multiple horns and electronic sounds in high energy arrangements. This quartet recording is a different story. Sarian is the lone horn here, playing trumpet on the first track and flugelhorn on the rest, while the music itself is strictly acoustic. Much of it has a gentle, folkish presence, although the leader's wilder impulses also make their presence known. The music's quiet side emerges ...
read moreMichael Sarian: New Aurora
by Friedrich Kunzmann
With New Aurora, Canadian trumpeter Michael Sarian takes a few steps down a different path to his past projects, leaving bigger ensembles and electric instrumentations behind to focus on ten arrangements carried out in an acoustic quartet setting. In this more dynamic light, the trumpeter is given space to unfold and spread his melodic voice and personal language. Sarian takes advantage of this in a minimal way. A heightened sense of sophistication can be heard as a result, leaving the ...
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