Jazz Articles about Elias Bailey

About Elias Bailey

Album Review

In a genre full of peaceniks, Lakecia Benjamin is a killer. Benjamin, the alto saxophonist, vocalist and multi-instrumentalist, has exploded over the course of the 2020's--both figuratively and musically. Her sound is brash and resonant, yet delicately composed and precisely structured. Benjamin is a focused musician, with all of her artistic choices brimming with intent, and the results are positively thrilling. She has become one of contemporary jazz's most popular and revered alto saxophonists, and she is just ...

Album Review

Lakecia Benjamin: We Dream

Read "We Dream" reviewed by Mike Jurkovic

by Mike Jurkovic
May 28, 2026

Lakecia Benjamin is clearly pulling no punches on We Dream. Not that she ever has, given a discography that includes 2020's Pursuance: The Coltranes (Ropeadope Records); 2012's intoxicating, groove-crazy Retox (Motema) or the spellbinding sister releases Phoenix (Whirlwind, 2023) and the super stoked Phoenix ReImagined (Live) (Ropeadope Records, 2024). We Dream drops the mic and leaves the rest up to the listener: What are you going to do to make the world a better place today? Excitable and ...

Album Review

Lakecia Benjamin: Phoenix Reimagined (Live)

Read "Phoenix Reimagined (Live)" reviewed by Mike Jurkovic

by Mike Jurkovic
July 7, 2024

The certifiable beauty of Phoenix Reimagined (Live) is that it all happens in very very real time as Lakecia Benjamin comes fiercely into her immediate own and then, in a tear of a performance that blisters the paint on the wall, surpasses herself. It is a momentous achievement. One that we rarely get to hear up close, personal and live. Benjamin cuts through the malaise of an empire falling, burning down the ministry of b.s. as she wields ...

Album Review

Mike McGinnis - Elias Bailey - Vinnie Sperazza: Time Is Thicker

Read "Time Is Thicker" reviewed by Angelo Leonardi

by Angelo Leonardi
September 29, 2021

Conclusa la notevole parentesi con Art Lande e Steve Swallow per l'etichetta Sunnyside (Recurring Dream del 2017 e Singular Awakening del 2018), Mike McGinnis conferma la formula del trio con due nuovi partner, privilegiando il clarinetto rispetto al sax soprano. Dopo ricercati lavori con medie formazioni dove ha espresso originalità come compositore e arrangiatore, McGinnis evidenzia l'alto talento strumentale confermandosi l'erede di Jimmy Giuffre e della moderna scuola clarinettistica nata con Buddy De Franco. Anche se ha ...

Album Review

Svetlana Shmulyian: Night at the Movies

Read "Night at the Movies" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey

by C. Michael Bailey
October 4, 2020

Svetlana Shmulyian is a gift that keeps on giving. The Russian-American emigre made her recording debut with Night at the Speakeasy (AO2 Records, 2016), where she infused the Great American Songbook's early canon with an Eastern essence of determination and intelligence. The singer followed that with her survey of film music Night at the Movies (Starr Records, 2020). Then the pandemic emerged, changing everything in the musical performance landscape. Shmulyian responded by surprising listeners with an outtake from ...

Album Review

Svetlana Shmulyian: Night at the Movies

by C. Michael Bailey
May 18, 2020

Russian-American singer Svetlana Shmulyian has blended an East Europe/Russia combination of elegant determination and delicate grit into the American Songbook on her debut recording Night at the Speakeasy (AO2 Records, 2016), and then film music on Night at the Movies (Starr Records, 2020). The artist surprised listeners by dropping an outtake from Night at the Movies, “Young and Beautiful" from The Great Gatsby (Warner Bros., 2013) in response to the global COVID-19 pandemic. “Young and Beautiful" was ...

Album Review

Svetlana: Night at the Movies

by C. Michael Bailey
January 10, 2020

Russian-American singer-composer Svetlana (she has a last name, Schmulyian, but prefers the monomoniker) is onto something. Her debut recording, Night at the Speakeasy (OA2 Records, 2016) with her self-appointed Delancey Five, was a structured affair which concentrated on the music of the “Jazz Age" (save for the Beach Boys' “God Only Knows") performed in a Jazz Age fashion, featuring trombonist Wycliffe Gordon. Svetlana returns with another themed recording, Night At the Movies, again featuring Gordon, on a collection of film ...