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Colin Stetson: New History Warfare Vol. 2: Judges
by Mark Corroto
Saxophonist Colin Stetson's New History Warfare Vol. 2: Judges evokes the quote by cowboy philosopher and former US Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, “There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know."First question, how does he do this? Recorded without loops or overdubs ...
Continue Reading...Peter Erskine / Bob Mintzer / Darek Oles / Alan Pasqua: Standards 2, Movie Music
by Dan McClenaghan
Composers of movie soundtracks have crafted some of the most enduring tunes for jazz treatment. Names like Leonard Bernstein, Cole Porter, Krzysztof Komeda, and Ennio Maricone show up in the credits of innumerable albums, with tunes that shape moods and atmospheres, and supply jazz artists with engaging melodies galore.Drummer Peter Erskine has collected a crack quartet which has, in turn, collected ten tunes from various movie soundtracks for a near perfect jazz outing, one with that swings with ...
Continue Reading...Donny Hathaway: Someday We'll All Be Free
by Jeff Dayton-Johnson
Donny HathawaySomeday We'll All Be FreeRhino France2010 Critical opinion has not always been kind to the singer Donny Hathaway, who died in 1979 at the age of 33. Some have decried an alleged bourgeoisification of soul; but more cruel, perhaps, is the general neglect of critical and commercial attention in which Hathaway's records languish. Rarely is he--or indeed, was he, during his lifetime--mentioned in the same breath as Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder ...
Continue Reading...Seval: i know you
by Bruce Lindsay
The concept of uniqueness is somewhat diminished in contemporary music journalism, where an artist can be labeled “unique," simply because he sports an amusing hairstyle or pair of trousers. Seval is splendidly unique, a one-off for all the best reasons. On its debut album, i know you, the band establishes itself with confidence and, of course, originality. Seval is led by Swedish-born, Chicago-based cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm; an experienced player who leads the Valentine Trio and is a ...
Continue Reading...Henry Darragh: Tell Her for Me
by C. Michael Bailey
Do we really need one more trombonist/singer from Texas? Well, seeing that the only one that comes to mind presently is “Tea" Jack Teagarden, then, well, yes we do. Multi-instrumentalist Henry Darragh completely fits the musical bill. While Darragh looks more like a physics graduate student at UT-Austin, he is, actually, an accomplished composer/performer, who leads multiple combos in everything from Tejano-jazz to mainstream. Don't let his appearance scare you, Henry Darragh is not a statistician. On ...
Continue Reading...International Street Cannibals Ensemble: Ballets & Solos
by Raul d'Gama Rose
If Ballets & Solos is any indication, then at least five young composers in the US are breaking barriers between genres and idioms. These young folks are brimful with ideas, humor and humanity, their compositions performed with wildly interesting and improvised cadenzas. The absolute command of melodic and harmonic invention is even more interesting. More than that, the sublime understanding of the tonal palettes of strings, middle register brass and lower register woodwinds--and, of course, the oceanic capability of the ...
Continue Reading...Larry Goldings and Harry Allen: When Larry Met Harry
by Greg Simmons
There is always a place in the world for beautifully played jazz, where the saxophonist doesn't sound like he's trying to inflict pain on his horn, and the pianist just hits all the right notes. Tenor player Harry Allen and his keyboard partner, Larry Goldings, are the musicians, and the album is When Larry Met Harryl. Of the twelve tracks on the record, eight were penned by Goldings, which is noteworthy because they would sound right at ...
Continue Reading...Blood, Sweat, Drum + Bass: Asa Nisi Masa
by Ian Patterson
Big bands don't come much bigger than Denmark's Blood, Sweat, Drum 'n Bass: 27 musicians, including a fourteeen-piece horn section, a nine-piece rhythm section, electric guitars, two vocalists and electronics. BSDnB purveys a brand of music which shares the iconoclastic approach and raw energy of Spanish saxophonist Llibert Fortuny's Electric Big Band, Belgian big band Flat Earth Society and the modernistic bent of Norwegian band Jaga Jazzist. The influence of the latter is felt on Asi Nisi Asa, through the ...
Continue Reading...Take Five With Tassos Spiliotopoulos
by AAJ Staff
Meet Tassos Spiliotopoulos: Tassos Spiliotopoulos is a Greek guitarist/composer based in London, UK. His compositional approach blends contemporary jazz with modern classical, folk and even rock fusion. He has released two albums under his own name: Wait for Dusk (Konnex, 2006), and Archipelagos (F-IRE, 2010.Instrument: Guitar.I knew I wanted to be a musician when... I started playing the piano at the age of six, but It didn't hit me until I got my first electric guitar ...
Continue Reading...Emergency!: Live In Copenhagen
by Mark Corroto
Surprisingly, drummer Yasuhiro Yoshigaki's band, Emergency!--formed in 2001--never performed outside of Japan until this 2006 date in Denmark. The quartet, also featuring guitarists Otomo Yoshihide and Ryoichi Saito, plus bassist Hiroaki Mizutani, covers the jazz compass in the same manner as 1990s Downtown bands Rootless Cosmopolitans and Junk Genius; that is, they sometimes reimagine standards by Duke Ellington, Burt Bacharach, and Lennon/McCartney in an entirely new dialect.Fans of Otomo Yoshihide may be familiar with his reconfiguration of Eric ...
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