Jazz Articles

like 553

Eri Yamamoto: In Each Day, Something Good

by John Sharpe
January 13, 2010

For her third outing under the Aum Fidelity banner, Japanese pianist Eri Yamamoto is back in the company of her long time trio featuring bassist Dave Ambrosio and drummer Ikuo Takeuchi. This is their sixth release together; not bad going for someone who had never played jazz before her 1995 visit to New York City, when first inspired to switch from classical upon hearing the great Tommy Flanagan doing his stuff. Though Yamamoto has found a niche at the free ...

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Eli Newberger: Music Maker, Medicine Man

by Edward Bride
January 13, 2010

Such is the nature of jazz tuba that few prominent players are household names outside their genre. Can you name “the Art Tatum of the tuba" or a “the Clifford Brown of the tuba"? Many of these instrumental performers are part-timers. Only, don't tell Eli Newberger that jazz is his secondary field: it ranks solidly in a two-way tie with his role as physician, lecturer and consultant in pediatric matters.

To jazz fans, Newberger is perhaps best-known as co-founder and ...

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Soft Machine: Live At Henie Onstad Arts Centre 1971

by Nic Jones
January 13, 2010

Soft Machine Live at Henie Onstad Arts Centre 1971 Reel Recordings 2009Here's some heady stuff from what in 2010 feels like a golden era, dubious though that notion might be in reality. There's already ample evidence that the Mike Ratledge / Elton Dean / Hugh Hopper / Robert Wyatt lineup of Soft Machine never played the same set the same way twice, and it's a tribute to the group's levels of interaction ...

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Soren Dahl Jeppesen: Route One

by Jakob Baekgaard
January 13, 2010

The new wave of Danish jazz has brought several guitarists into the public eye, among them, Jakob Bro, Mark Solborg, and Mikkel Ploug. However, a somewhat underexposed talent on the Danish jazz scene is Søren Dahl Jeppesen. His graceful, lyrical tone and abilities as a composer have benefitted the ambient chamber jazz of the group Pauseland.

Route One is Jeppesen's first album as a leader, and it finds him doing what he does best: creating subtle musical moods and simple, ...

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Marion Brown: Why Not?

by Clifford Allen
January 13, 2010

Marion Brown Why Not? ESP-Disk 2009 (1966)

While the term “fire music" has held sway as a descriptor of the music of post-John Coltrane/Albert Ayler saxophonists from the 1960s onward, it's long been an incomplete summation of the work of most of these musicians. Alto saxophonist Marion Brown appeared on Coltrane's Ascension and tenor man Archie Shepp's Fire Music (both Impulse, 1965) and his playing was early on championed by poet/critic LeRoi ...

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Kurt Rosenwinkel Standards Trio: Reflections

by Greg Camphire
January 13, 2010

A warm and understated trio record, Kurt Rosenwinkel's Reflections zeroes in on an approach to standard repertoire, marking an interesting career turn for the guitarist in the process. With support from drummer Eric Harland and bassist Eric Revis, the six-string innovator opens a window to another side of his playing, featuring quiet meditations on the blues, ballads, and swing. It's a curious listening experience, coming long after Rosenwinkel has already established an original voice as a composer ...

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Harry Allen: New York State of Mind

by Woodrow Wilkins
January 13, 2010

New York City has been the setting of numerous television series and movies. It has also inspired many songs. Tenor saxophonist Harry Allen captures some of that essence with New York State of Mind, named for pop singer Billy Joel's composition. Allen, 43, was born in Washington, D.C. and raised in both Los Angeles, California, and Burriville, Rhode Island. He has been a sideman to John Pizzarelli and performed at festivals and clubs worldwide. His associations include Rosemary ...

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Sonny Fortune: Last Night at Sweet Rhythm

by Terrell Kent Holmes
January 13, 2010

A few months ago, in 2009, reedman Sonny Fortune brought his quartet into the late Greenwich Village club to cut his first live recording as a leader. The performance captured on Last Night at Sweet Rhythm shows, as Fortune moves into his seventies, that his playing is as innovative, daring and fiery as ever. The set list can be viewed as a kind of retrospective, originals culled from various periods in Fortune's career. He goes for the ...

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Chick Corea / John McLaughlin: Five Peace Band Live

by Chris Kompanek
January 13, 2010

From the psychedelic cover art to the expansive and innovative playing, Five Peace Band Live is a throwback to the great live albums Miles Davis made in the late-1960s-1970s, with some of the same musicians. Chick Corea and John McLaughlin actually met in 1969 during the recording sessions that would become the classic fusion albums In a Silent Way and Bitches Brew (both on Columbia). Thirty years later they play the title piece from the former on ...

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Jeremy Pelt: Men of Honor

by Joel Roberts
January 13, 2010

The title of firebrand trumpeter Jeremy Pelt's Men of Honor refers to the members of his quintet who, like their leader here, are among the foremost 30-something neo-bop players in jazz today. The album is a follow-up to Pelt's acclaimed November (MAXJAZZ, 2008), which marked this all-acoustic quintet's debut, and came on the heels of a couple of releases that explored a sort of early-1970s electric Miles Davis vibe. Heralded for years as one of the “rising ...