Jazz Articles about Billy Mohler

About Billy Mohler

Album Review

Pianist Rachel Eckroth may use wellness or New agey terms such as polymath or bold vision to describe her approach to her considerable art, but she gets down to Earth for real and very quickly on Humanoid, her first all-acoustic recording. Recorded live at Sam's First in Los Angeles, Eckroth's very active imagination spearheads a group, including bassist and all round jazz entrepreneur Billy Mohler, drummer Tina Raymond--whose uncanny sense for everything a drummer can do, can be ...

Album Review

Dan Rosenboom: Polarity

Read "Polarity" reviewed by Jerome Wilson

by Jerome Wilson
August 5, 2023

On this album, trumpeter Dan Rosenboom and his quartet engage in a free-wheeling session which comes off as a modern update of Wayne Shorter releases such as The All-Seeing Eye (Blue Note, 1966). He engages in playful genre-crossing and experimentation here which incorporate the sensibilities of hip-hop and ambient music as well as modern jazz. The album's key track is the marathon opener, “The Age of Snakes" in which Rosenboom's trumpet and Gavin Templeton's alto saxophone lazily float ...

Album Review

Alex Sadnik: Flight

by Jeff Schwartz
May 8, 2023

What is new to say through Charlie Parker's music? On Flight Alex Sadnik looks for answers with two different bands. On the first side of the LP, his alto fronts a quintet with violin, pedal steel guitar, bass,and drums, but this is not a Bob Wills or Bill Frisell pastiche. The opening track, “Donna Lee," stretches and compresses Parker's speedy contrafact of “Indiana" into a medium waltz. Both Sadnik's alto tone and the metric liberties taken with ...

Album Review

Dan Rosenboom: Polarity

Read "Polarity" reviewed by Pat Youngspiel

by Pat Youngspiel
April 19, 2023

Recently, Los Angeles-based trumpeter Dan Rosenboom has been experimenting with somewhat freer and edgier realms of improvisation, giving doomy metal influences a go on Trio Subliminal 2 (Orenda Records, 2022), and indulging high-energy trio interplay with plenty of delay effects and other sonic manipulation on Refraction (Orenda Records, 2021). Not to mention the opulent The Complete Boom Sessions (Orenda Records, 2022), which captured over 400-minutes, live to tape, recorded over five gigs at one of Los Angeles' premiere hubs for ...

Radio & Podcasts

Billy Mohler, Bill Frisell, Jeong Lim Yang, Ken Stubbs & More New Releases

by Ludovico Granvassu
January 14, 2023

Bands of improvisational genius, two takes on early Bill Frisell compositions, an album revisiting the legacy of First House, two productions by the David Breskin / Ron St. Germain dream team, and much more in this edition of Mondo Jazz. Happy listening! PlaylistBen Allison “Mondo Jazz Theme (feat. Ted Nash & Pyeng Threadgill)" 0:00 Billy Mohler “Fight Song" Anatomy (Contagious Music) 0:16 Host talks 4:07 Dan Weiss “For Tim Smith" Dedication (Cygnus) 5:43 Host talks 11:18 ...

Album Review

Billy Mohler: Anatomy

by John Chacona
July 2, 2022

Can we please retire the old cliché about jazz from Los Angeles being limp, wan and bland? One listen to pianist Cameron Graves' slamming metal-jazz or to the jittery complexity of David Binney's recent releases should be enough to torch that outdated canard. Now comes bassist Billy Mohler with Anatomy, 43 minutes of amped-up, torqued-out energy that pulses with the elevated heart-rate of first-wave punk rock. That's no accident. Mohler is a pop music pro, a Grammy nominee ...

Album Review

Dan Rosenboom: Points of an Infinite Line

Read "Points of an Infinite Line" reviewed by Friedrich Kunzmann

by Friedrich Kunzmann
March 8, 2021

Released in the environment of his own label's absolute creative control, trumpeter Dan Rosenboom's newest outing sees a chordless quartet venturing beyond the borders of swing, exploring heavy grooves and free-wheeling improvisation to the point where jazz, hip hop and the rough edges of many other genres meld together to a single style that simultaneously defies the same categorizes of which it is made. Rosenboom's L.A.-based cohorts, drummer Anthony Fung, saxophonist Gavin Templeton and double bassist Billy Mohler, are instrumental ...