Jazz Articles about David Helm

About David Helm

Album Review

Kārlis Auziņš Double Trio: Equilibrium Suite

Read "Equilibrium Suite" reviewed by Mark Corroto

by Mark Corroto
July 8, 2025

Latvian saxophonist Kārlis Auziņš would never, we can assume, claim that his Equilibrium Suite stands as the equal of John Coltrane's A Love Supreme (Impulse!, 1964). His reverence for Coltrane's seminal work is too deep. Still, listeners may find themselves drawing a natural connection--celebrating Auziņš's own modern spiritual statement, one forged with sincerity, originality and purpose. Auziņš may be most familiar to jazz audiences through his work with the exploratory quartet Mount Meander, which released two albums: Mount Meander (Clean ...

Album Review

Simon Nabatov Quartet featuring Ralph Alessi: Lovely Music

Read "Lovely Music" reviewed by John Sharpe

by John Sharpe
December 3, 2024

An alternative title for Lovely Music by Russian-born, German -based pianist Simon Nabatov might be Greatest Hits. He has selected some of his most tuneful works from across his career for interpretation by a quintet which includes American trumpeter Ralph Alessi in a one-off performance. Completing the lineup of this 2021 live date from Nabatov's home from home, Loft in Cologne, are more regular colleagues saxophonist Sebastian Gille, bassist David Helm and drummer Leif Berger. However, it presents not as ...

Album Review

Florian Ross: Architexture

Read "Architexture" reviewed by Jerome Wilson

by Jerome Wilson
March 16, 2021

Writing about music has been compared to dancing about architecture, in that it is a supposedly useless task. Writing music about architecture is a worthwhile proposition, though, as shown by this release from German pianist Florian Ross, composing music for his quartet and the Event Wind Ensemble which is inspired by famous architects and buildings he has encountered in his travels. This music plays like an updating of the Third Stream genre, combining classical formality and jazz fluidity. ...

Album Review

Florian Ross: Reason & Temptation

Read "Reason & Temptation" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
December 27, 2020

Midsummer 2019 was quite a busy time for Florian Ross. Apparently, the German-born pianist recorded the quartet date Reason & Temptation from June 29-July 2, then returned the following day to the same studio in Koln and added a wind ensemble to record Architexture for another label (Naxos). Reason & Temptation was self-produced on Ross's own label, Toy Piano Records. In each case the core group consists of the pianist's working quartet—saxophonist Sebastian Gille, bassist David Helm, ...