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Jazz Articles about Curtis Hasselbring

About Curtis Hasselbring

Album Review

Note to conservative Republicans: stop reading this review now. Note to self: There cannot be but a handful of folks who are both MAGA and jazz and improvised music listeners. Jeff Lederer's Guilty!!! recalls a time when jazz was at the forefront of the zeitgeist. Max Roach, John Coltrane, and Charles Mingus were creating music about and during the civil rights movement. Elsewhere Neil Young was protesting the four dead at Kent State, while Graham Nash was recruiting ...

Album Review

Audible Spirits: Audible Spirits

Read "Audible Spirits" reviewed by Mark Corroto

by Mark Corroto
August 9, 2023

Audible Spirits is not your father's or for that matter your grandmother's book of standards. Vibraphonist Matt Moran, trombonist Curtis Hasselbring, and vocalist Sarah Elizabeth Charles reinvent, reinterpret, and definitely reimagine eight classic jazz compositions. For a living jazz musician of any age, there is a book of songs that is de rigueur in jazz education. This is also required if one is to sit in on jam sessions or have at the ready to quote in an improvisation. Most ...

Album Review

Club d'Elf: As Above - Live At The Lizard Lounge

Read "As Above - Live At The Lizard Lounge" reviewed by Doug Collette

by Doug Collette
February 20, 2023

The music of Club d'Elf's debut album, As Above, speaks volumes in terms of the group's mystical and stylistic roots. In fact, it is perfectly reflective of the actual ancient quote from which the title is taken; 'As above, so below...' suggests how the rhythm motifs are as fully and completely developed as the melodic themes. Recorded in 1999 and 2000, at the Lizard Lounge in Boston, which has become Mike Rivard and company's home base over the ...

Album Review

Satoko Fujii Orchestra New York: Entity

Read "Entity" reviewed by Neri Pollastri

by Neri Pollastri
November 29, 2021

Undicesimo album per l'Orchestra New York di Satoko Fujii, qui composta di tredici elementi, dei quali ben nove già presenti nel primo lavoro, South Wind, risalente al lontano 1997. Il disco è registrato nel maggio del 2019 ed è uscito già lo scorso anno, ma merita egualmente grande attenzione, in quanto si tratta di un lavoro di primissimo livello. Né poteva essere diversamente, considerando non solo la qualità media, altissima, delle produzioni della musicista giapponese, ma anche l'organico straordinario della ...

Album Review

Joel Harrison: America at War

Read "America at War" reviewed by Angelo Leonardi

by Angelo Leonardi
July 12, 2021

"È tutta la vita che il mio paese conduce tragiche e futili invasioni straniere. Ho sentito che dovevo scrivere su questo fatto, infondere nella mia nuova musica la sua dolorosa eredità." Queste riflessioni aprono il nuovo disco di Joel Harrison, ritornato a sette anni di distanza da Infinite Possibility a guidare un ensemble orchestrale. La storia bellica degli Stati Uniti è piuttosto lunga: in 245 anni ha combattuto 123 conflitti militari vivendo solo 18 anni in completa pace. ...

Album Review

Matty Stecks & Persiflage: Night Cravings

Read "Night Cravings" reviewed by Mike Jurkovic

by Mike Jurkovic
March 22, 2021

Like sneaking into the boy's room for a smoke, bassist Dave Ambrosio intros both Night Cravings, the concept and title track, with a sinister ease, sparking a slow burning fuse that once lit, ain't going out until all in attendance damn well reach accord. Or don't. Either/or, it's a spilling energy not unlike the frisson encounters of Keith Jarrett's storied, 70's American and European quartets. That alone makes Night Cravings well worth your investment. New York is not ...

Album Review

Satoko Fujii Orchestra New York: Entity

Read "Entity" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
February 4, 2020

Pianist / composer Satoko Fujii has staked out her ground as one of the most original voices in jazz—or in any artform, for that matter. She has released more than eighty albums, beginning with her 1995 debut, Something About Water (Libra Records), a piano duet set with Paul Bley. She tours relentlessly. She records in every ensemble format imaginable: solos, duos, trios, quartets and big bands. Lots of big bands, based in Berlin, Tokyo, Kobe, Nagoya, New York.