Jazz Articles about Bret Higgins

About Bret Higgins

Album Review

Bret Higgins: Scoring The Unseen

Read "Scoring The Unseen" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
August 23, 2026

Bret Higgins has built a career as a bassist among adventurous improvisers, but on Scoring the Unseen he steps fully into the role of film composer, minus the inconvenience of an actual film. The concept, soundtracks for movies that exist only in imagination, could easily be read as a gimmick on paper. On wax, it plays like a genuine calling. Higgins handles double bass, piano, synthesizers, clavinet, vibraphone, ocarina, and charango himself, an instrumental range that borders on showing off, ...

Album Review

Bret Higgins' Atlas Revolt: Bret Higgins' Atlas Revolt

Read "Bret Higgins' Atlas Revolt" reviewed by Vic Albani

by Vic Albani
May 9, 2016

Non ce ne eravamo dimenticati. Chiediamo scusa per il ritardo poiché di questo disco si sarebbe dovuto parlare già diverso tempo fa ma... i pompieri, le cavallette e via di conserva. Come è ormai ben noto, John Zorn licenzia spesso per la sua attivissima Tzadik molti dischi di notevole spessore qualitativo ed interesse. In questi ultimi anni, il tema pseudo-o para-klezmer è stato debitamente setacciato e analizzato nelle sue variegate declinazioni da molte formazioni. Nessuna di queste ...

Album Review

Bret Higgins' Atlas Revolt: Bret Higgins' Atlas Revolt

Read "Bret Higgins' Atlas Revolt" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
December 26, 2015

Canadian bassist Bret Higgins' Atlas Revolt ensemble celebrates its inaugural outing on composer, multi-instrumentalist and producer John Zorn's diverse and far-reaching Tzadik record label. Consequently, Higgins is a member of the Canadian band Zebrina --cited as bringing “Jewish music into the 21st century" --and features venerable American clarinetist Ben Goldberg on the 2014 Tzadik release Hamidbar Medaber Atlas Revolt cogently fuses Middle Eastern and North African modalities with jazz-rock, hard rock, funk and hints of Klezmer into a ...

Album Review

Bret Higgins' Atlas Revolt: Bret Higgins' Atlas Revolt

Read "Bret Higgins' Atlas Revolt" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
August 28, 2015

The eponymous debut from Toronto-based bassist Bret Higgins' Atlas Revolt is a tough one to pin down and an easy one to get pleasantly lost in. Higgins regularly walks through different musical worlds, working with the folk-rock outfit Great Lake Swimmers, the Balkan-klezmer band Beyond The Pale, the folk-ish Ozere, and the trippy avant-klezmer jam band known as Zebrina, so it should come as no surprise that his own music pulls from so many different places. He ...