Jazz Articles about Carl Clements

About Carl Clements

Album Review

Fumi Tomita: Yokai: Songs of the Japanese Supernatural

Read "Yokai: Songs of the Japanese Supernatural" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
October 22, 2026

In 2023, seeking solace after the recent death of his father, bassist and composer Fumi Tomita began exploring the artwork in a book of woodblock Japanese images that his wife had given him, and found in them the inspiration for an album devoted to exploring the mystical realm of Japanese spiritualism from a jazz perspective. Tomita, a New Yorker of Japanese descent, wrote nine themes based on his understanding of Japanese supernatural beliefs and recorded them with his ...

Album Review

Carl Clements: A Different Light

Read "A Different Light" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
May 29, 2024

Sunlight beaming into a church through a stained-glass window is a different light--tinted and soft-hued, suggestive of the presence of divinity. Saxophonist Carl Clements' quartet outing, A Different Light, gives the same impression. Looking to the album's stained glass-like cover art, artist Amanda Barrow's visual for the album seems a fine fit for this distinctive, modern jazz quartet. The painting's colors are mostly muted, with two overlapping spheres (Neptune and Uranus? Or gas giants from another solar system?) in eclipse, ...

Album Review

Felipe Salles: Home Is Here

Read "Home Is Here" reviewed by Angelo Leonardi

by Angelo Leonardi
October 26, 2023

Home Is Here conclude la trilogia del compositore e bandleader brasiliano Felipe Salles (residente dal 1995 negli USA dove insegna all'Università del Massachusetts Amherst) dedicata al tema dell'immigrazione. Un'indagine musicale e multimediale iniziata nel 2018 con The Lullaby Project e proseguita due anni dopo con The New Immigrant Experience, di cui abbiamo già parlato in queste pagine. Qui Salles focalizza il tema dell'immigrazione nel jazz ed ha invitato otto protagonisti della scena di New York ad esibirsi col ...

Album Review

Felipe Salles Interconnections Ensemble: Home is Here

Read "Home is Here" reviewed by Troy Dostert

by Troy Dostert
May 11, 2023

For the third recording from his Interconnections Ensemble, tenor saxophonist and composer Felipe Salles chose to put the artists first--literally. That is, he had extensive conversations with each of the guest musicians on the record before composing the pieces on which each would be featured, thus highlighting their own stylistic and personal characteristics. The result is a polychromatic, adventurous album that allows Salles' multidimensionality as a composer to flourish. And with top-shelf guests such as Melissa Aldana, Paquito D'Rivera, and ...