Jazz Articles about Chris Abrahams

About Chris Abrahams

Album Review

Chris Abrahams and Dave Symes: Distant Birds, Vol. 01 & 02

Read "Distant Birds, Vol. 01 & 02" reviewed by Neil Duggan

by Neil Duggan
May 2, 2026

Distant Birds, Vol. 01 & 02 is the result of a collaboration between keyboard player Chris Abrahams and bassist Dave Symes. Consisting of four long-form tracks that amount to a double vinyl or single CD, the album is a heady mix of keyboard textures and lithe bass lines with extended improvisations. The band's groove-driven soundscape is completed by the highly effective trio of drummer Evan Mannell, trumpeter Ellen Kirkwood and baritone saxophonist Matthew Ottignon. With a career spanning ...

Album Review

The Vampires: Nightjar

Read "Nightjar" reviewed by Pat Youngspiel

by Pat Youngspiel
May 7, 2023

Australian saxophonist Jeremy Rose's admiration for minimalist trio The Necks is of great depth, to the extent that he published an essay on the group, entitled “Memory and Mindfulness in the Musical Rituals of the Necks," examining musical ritualistic practices “beyond the African American realm capable of scaffolding transcendent experience." And he is not the only Vampire to have previously collaborated with a Neck. Besides his own ethno-improvisational endeavor with the trio Vazesh, featuring The Necks bassist Lloyd Swanton and ...

Album Review

The Necks: Three

by Mike Jurkovic
April 21, 2020

With their stubbornly spiky, hold-onto-your-hat mindset firmly rooted, a high fever runs wild on Three, The Necks' twenty-first release in its thirty-three year, unhindered-by-genre career. It starts like most of the trio's existential, kaleidoscopic excursions do: some minimalist point of blurred melodic frenzy is acted upon and the rest becomes an amalgam of theory and system... jazz, rock, industrial, whatever suits the moment. It can be irresponsibly reckless, remotely ambient, soulfully rewarding, cantankerous, glaringly indulgent or plain brilliant at any ...

Album Review

The Necks: Three

by Mark Sullivan
April 9, 2020

Live performances by Australian free-improvising trio The Necks typically take the form of a single, slowly growing and morphing mass of sound. On recordings the musicians give themselves permission to sculpt the sound, so it is not a real-time document. Nevertheless their two previous albums Vertigo (Northern Spy Records, 2015) and Body (Northern Spy Records, 2018) both presented a single long track apiece, paralleling their live practice. This time the program is broken into three parts, each with its own ...

Album Review

Chris Abrahams & Sabine Vogel: Kopfuberwelle

Read "Kopfuberwelle" reviewed by John Eyles

by John Eyles
January 10, 2013

Kopfüberwelle features the duo of German flautist Sabine Vogel and The Necks' pianist, Chris Abrahams, uncharacteristically on pipe organ. Of the six tracks, the first five were recorded in May 2010 in St. Annenkirche in Zepernick and the sixth in June 2009 in Potsdam, where Vogel holds a university teaching position. The rationale for Abrahams' switch of instrument from piano to organ is explained by the duo's “explorations of both differences and similarities between the flute and organ." There are ...