Jazz Articles

like 377

Let's Do It!: Recordings by Mark Egan, Carl Fischer and Terje Lie

by Martin Gladu
February 23, 2010

The great Miles Davis did it. Chick Corea did it with different groups. Michael Brecker did it with family. Even the educated John Scofield did it. Not to mention Mike Stern. They all did it and we lauded them for it. Most college big bands in America reserve some time in their sets to do it. Even the electrifying Chris Potter regularly lets loose and does it.Nothing more natural than getting busy on a steady, thrusting groove and ...

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Chris Greene Quartet: Merge

by C. Michael Bailey
February 23, 2010

Chicago-native Chris Greene keeps stylistic company with Wayne Escoffery, AJ Kluth, and Ricky Sweum, in that he plays a saxophone with sharp edges when necessary and smooth ones when called upon. His previous recordings, On The Verge (as Chris Greene's New Perspective, Self Produced, 2002) and Soul and Science, Volume 1 (as the Chris Green Quartet, Single Malt Recordings, 2007) show Greene as a post-bop maverick intent on shaking things up for the mainstream. He continues his efforts in this ...

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Omri Ziegele’s Where’s Africa Trio: Can Walk On Sand

by Nic Jones
February 23, 2010

This could almost be a band “on a hiding to nothing" considering it self-consciously mines the seam of vibrant music first tapped by the likes of Chris McGregor and Harry Miller. Given the fact that it's only a trio, it's inevitable perhaps that the group lacks the sheer sonic impact of McGregor's much larger bands, but even by comparison with Miller's group Isipingo, which was usually a sextet, the music this band produces is wanting in depth and fire.

It's ...

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Hiromi: Place To Be

by Jeff Winbush
February 23, 2010

Some musicians take the tortured artist thing too far. With their on-stage, “in the zone" demeanor, some pianists look as if they're on the verge of a heart attack. If they relaxed a bit would anyone think less of them? Hiromi Uehara is certainly a serious musician yet never leaves the impression of taking herself too seriously. She's having too much fun for that.By any measurement, her last two years have been busy. Backed by her band, Hiromi's ...

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John Ellis & Double-Wide: Puppet Mischief

by Chris May
February 22, 2010

Brooklyn-based saxophonist John Ellis is a player who, whenever he puts his horn in his mouth, makes it seem like retro-modern is the only show in town. His style is part classic soul and funk, part modern jam band groove and part freewheeling improvisation. He has a particular affinity with New Orleans roots music and also references non-American folk and popular styles. He has a hipster sense of humor and an itch to experiment. It's a spellbinding combination and is ...

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Dee Dee Bridgewater: Dee Dee on Billie

by Esther Berlanga-Ryan
February 22, 2010

It is almost inevitable for most people to think of Billie Holiday as a wounded human being who suffered, struggled and eased her pain with drugs and song lyrics on her way to self destruction in 1959. In her greatness, Billie was as devastating and as devastated as a summer with no water. And yet her magnetism, her very soul picking through her vocal chords and reaching out to the world, her goodness as a citizen of a world that ...

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Stephane Kerecki Trio featuring Tony Malaby: Houria

by Chris May
February 22, 2010

Stephane Kerecki Trio featuring Tony Malaby Houria Zig-Zag Territoires 2009

It is one thing to make music of limpid beauty, another to make music of high-tensile muscularity. It is something else again to combine both qualities in such a way that each enhances the other. But that is what the French bassist and composer Stephane Kerecki has done with the third album by his trio, augmented for the occasion by ...

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Matt Slocum: Portraits

by Mark F. Turner
February 22, 2010

Matt Slocum's multicolored traps--at times forceful or delicate, creatively painting varied tempos with the essence of swing--define the drummer's debut, Portraits. Hailing from St. Paul, Minnesota, Slocum's introduction carries forward the torch of patriarchs Max Roach and Elvin Jones amongst others, but he also carves out his own rhythmic patterns with young contemporaries such as Eric Harland and Johnathan Blake.

Slocum is joined by equally distinguished peers: award-winning pianist Gerald Clayton, whose own debut, Two-Shade (ArtistShare, 2009), was ...

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Froy Aagre: Cycle of Silence

by John Kelman
February 22, 2010

For her first album on the internationally distributed ACT label, saxophonist Frøy Aagre continues along the path begun with her earlier releases on the Norwegian AIM label--Katalyze (2004) and Countryside (2006)--mining her own combination of melancholic Nordicism, Baroque classicism and American jazz tradition. As on Countryside, she expands her core piano/bass/drums quartet on six tracks, enhancing the disc's overall chamber vibe with cello, and the surprisingly vocal combination of French horn and trombone. This time, Aagre puts down ...

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Aram Shelton’s Fast Citizens: Two Cities

by Nic Jones
February 22, 2010

Fast Citizens may encapsulate a significant shift that's been occurring in creative improvised music over the last few decades, with the collective nature of music by a sextet of musicians who have been around long enough to qualify, more-or-less, as veterans.

This is such an integral aspect of what they do, they make the case that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. For example, on the opening title track, both Keefe Jackson, on tenor sax, and ...