Jazz Articles about Erik Jekabson

About Erik Jekabson

Album Review

Daggerboard: The Skipper and Mike Clark

Read "The Skipper and Mike Clark" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
March 31, 2026

The rhythm section--more specifically, bassist Henry “The Skipper" Franklin and drummer Mike Clark--is front and center on the fourth recording by San Francisco Bay-area Daggerboard, the brainchild of trumpeter Erik Jekabson and percussionist Gregory Howe, who have enlisted a large array of supporting actors to help refine and sharpen their unique musical vision. That includes a four-member string section on three of the album's ten numbers, two of which ("Tanzanian Skies," the closing “Ruaha Daybreak") were written by ...

Liner Notes

Jason Keiser: Kind of Kenny

by Andrew Gilbert
September 14, 2024

Over the past decade San Jose guitarist Jason Keiser has carved out a sterling reputation as a bandleader whose musical passions range across North America's expansive soundscape, and this album extends his exploration into arrestingly lyrical territory. After highlighting Woody Shaw's treasure trove of intervallic leaping post-bop gems on 2023's Shaw's Groove, he turns his attention to another undersung trumpet maestro with Kind of Kenny, a deep dive into the ravishing music of Canadian composer Kenny Wheeler (1930-2014).

Album Review

Jacqui Naylor: Treasures of the Heart

Read "Treasures of the Heart" reviewed by Nicholas F. Mondello

by Nicholas F. Mondello
May 15, 2024

Jacqui Naylor's Treasure of the Heart sends up fourteen highly unique jewels, with ten of those being original compositions from Naylor and spouse Art Khu and four classics, all offering a wide range of grooves from funk, jazz, and rock. Throughout the date, Naylor exhibits a healthy versatility with her vocal instrument and delivers a lyric interpretation that at times startles. Rodgers and Hart's well-recorded jazz standard, “I Didn't Know What Time It Was," launches things and ...

Album Review

Taj Mahal: Savoy

by Steve Yip
June 10, 2023

Folk/blues practitioner Taj Mahal's Savoy is to be savored. As one of the custodians of the blues, Mahal has long been a legend in his own time. This collection traverses a cultural-musical continuum in an indispensable residency in the annals of Black American music. The namesake of this album--the Savoy on Lenox Avenue in Harlem--was known as The World's Finest Ballroom and Home Of Happy Feet. In the pre-Civil Rights era, the North claimed formal equality, but segregation ...

Album Review

Jason Keiser: Shaw's Groove

Read "Shaw's Groove" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
May 24, 2023

The “Shaw" in guitarist Jason Keiser's album Shaw's Groove is the late great Woody Shaw, one of the more innovative and influential jazz trumpeters of the twentieth century. Even though he lived only forty-four years (he died in May 1989), Shaw was an important role model whose sweeping influence remains strong to this day, both as a player and composer. The first four songs on Shaw's Groove were written by Shaw himself, among the many he composed ...

Album Review

Taj Mahal: Savoy

by Dave Linn
May 3, 2023

Savoy, from Taj Mahal, is the latest entrant in the crowded field of pop music artists trying their hand at the fertile songbook of old big-band, swing-era standards. Unlike most, Mahal's roots show he's well suited to the task. He was born in Harlem in 1942. He grew up in a musical family, and his parents were both involved in the arts. His father was a jazz pianist and arranger, working with Cab Calloway, Duke Ellington, and Fletcher Henderson among ...

Album Review

Daggerboard & The Skipper: Daggerboard And the Skipper

Read "Daggerboard And the Skipper" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
March 16, 2022

For those who think they can tell an album's sound by its cover, think again in the case of Daggerboard and The Skipper. That cover art seems to have come from the walls of an inner sanctum of a Pre-Columbian pyramid. So what kind of music will that be? It is hard to find information on this release. Daggerboard seems to consist of the workings of percussionist/songwriter Gregory Howe and trumpeter/flugelhornist/songwriter Erik Jekabson, of Throttle Elevator Music fame, ...