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Dwayne Clemons: Center of Gravity: Live at Smalls
by Jack Bowers
On Center of Gravity, veteran trumpeter Dwayne Clemons displays his astuteness and savvy in a generally impressive session recorded in September 2023 at Smalls Jazz Club in New York City, leading a sextet in which he shares the front line with alto saxophonist Amanda Sedgwick and tenor Aaron Johnson. This is a colorful and broad-shouldered date wherein everyone more than pulls his (or her) weight, with the horns adeptly supported from end to end by pianist JinJoo ...
Continue ReadingDwayne Clemons: Center of Gravity: Live at Smalls
by Pierre Giroux
Copenhagen-based trumpeter Dwayne Clemons is an accomplished musician whose US career trajectory hit a speed bump in the 1990s when he was incarcerated for a narcotics conviction. Fortunately, he caught the attention of pianist and club owner Spike Wilner who encouraged him to come to New York to play. In time, the result was that, in many ways, Smalls became like the home base for Clemons. Center of Gravity: Live at Smalls is the second live album he has completed ...
Continue ReadingAllen Lowe: A Love Supine: Ascension into the Maelstrom
by Karl Ackermann
There is an exhaustive property to the body of Allen Lowe's work. Composer, saxophonist, sporadic guitarist who composes on piano, and the author of several noteworthy music histories, he has released nearly two dozen albums. Lowe is a member of the quartet East Axis with Matthew Shipp, Gerald Cleaver, and Kevin Ray. A Love Supine: Ascension into the Maelstrom is an ambitious double-disc collection recorded in four sessions in 2018. The eighteen tracks were all composed by Lowe. The sessions ...
Continue ReadingVeronica Swift: This Bitter Earth
by Angelo Leonardi
Ad appena 26 anni Veronica Swift firma il suo album più avvincente e maturo, imponendosi come la vocalist stilisticamente più completa emersa nel nuovo millennio. Dotata di un talento prodigioso, s'è imposta nell'affollato panorama odierno delle cantanti per inventiva e virtuosismo, rinnovando l'eredità di grandi interpreti degli anni cinquanta come Anita O'Day e Dinah Washington. Veronica Swift s'esprime con esuberante entusiasmo e profondità interpretativa, sorretta da una naturale capacità di “comunicare" col pubblico, ben oltre il semplice ...
Continue ReadingVeronica Swift: This Bitter Earth
by Mike Jurkovic
Borrowing music from Broadway (Oliver!, South Pacific, Bye Bye Birdie), alt-rock (The Dresden Dolls' “Sing!"), the great American Songbook, ("Getting To Know You"), R&B, and beyond, it takes an artist of sure and rising stature to curate one hell of a coherent protest album. Veronica Swift is that artist and, most declaratively, This Bitter Earth is that album. Since there is not a standard of any bearing that Swift doesn't defy and stamp as her very own, it ...
Continue ReadingVeronica Swift: This Bitter Earth
by C. Michael Bailey
It seems jazz vocalist Veronica Swift has been in the music business all of her life, and for good reason: There is the well documented fact that she is the daughter of jazz pianist Hod O'Brien and singer Stephanie Nakasian, and she debuted on record at nine years old with Veronica's House of Jazz (SNOB, 2004). Since that time, Swift has recorded in a variety of settings, including on the uniformly excellent The Birdland Big Band Live (CD Baby, 2018), ...
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