Jazz Articles about Elijah Shiffer

About Elijah Shiffer

Album Review

Elijah Shiffer: City Of Birds, Volume 3: Fly By Night Blues

Read "City Of Birds, Volume 3: Fly By Night Blues" reviewed by Max Kutner

by Max Kutner
December 25, 2025

Few current composers are as restlessly inventive as saxophonist-clarinetist Elijah Shiffer. Over the past decade, Shiffer has led numerous ensembles and written an ever-expanding catalog of original music, all crafted and thematically tied closely to and informed by distinct aspects of his interests and tastes. Fly by Night Blues, the third volume in his City of Birds series, speaks to all those qualities. Like the previous two offerings, Shiffer uses meticulously transcribed songs and voices from birds native to the ...

Album Review

Elijah Shiffer: Star Jelly

Read "Star Jelly" reviewed by Richard J Salvucci

by Richard J Salvucci
October 23, 2023

Sometimes very talented people write difficult music. The music is difficult because its intent is not immediately clear. Or it does not follow canonical criteria, at least as currently understood. Music history presents us with many examples: Charles Ives, Igor Stravinsky, Dmitri Shostakovich--these are only very famous “classical" composers whose work passed from controversial to acceptable to mainstream. In jazz, one thinks of Ornette Coleman or someone probably considerably less orthodox and perhaps much less well known.