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Colin Hancock's Jazz Hounds Featuring Catherine Russell: Cat & The Hounds

by Pierre Giroux
Catherine Russell teams up with Colin Hancock's Jazz Hounds for the release Cat & The Hounds, a recording exploring the roots of Black popular music from the early 1920s. Far from simply nostalgic, the project acts as a lively revival of an evolving art form, balancing the syncopated ragtime style and blues-infused improvisations that defined the Jazz Age. Russell's commanding voice, rich with warmth and character, serves as the perfect centre of attention as the band uncovers rare and overlooked ...
Continue ReadingJon-Erik Kellso and the EarRegulars: Live at the Ear Inn

by Jack Bowers
As trumpeter Jon-Erik Kellso and his EarRegulars had been performing every Sunday night for more than sixteen years at New York City's historic Ear Inn, Kellso reasoned it was time that one of their concerts should be recorded to share more broadly the fun and enthusiasm that animates every session. Once the ties had been bound, parts of two concerts were recorded, on January 15 and 29, 2023. The music is a hybrid, with one foot planted ...
Continue ReadingKathy Ingraham: Everlasting Cool

by Richard J Salvucci
If you have a lovely mezzo-soprano voice, lots of chops, a feel for selling a song, a talent for storytelling, and some sense of why tradition is what it is, you end up with Kathy Ingraham. Ms. Ingraham is also not afraid of the big no-no, singing standards (and, lo and behold, their verses too), although she has been known to write her own material too. Whatever the case, she is a treat to listen to and, with a nonpareil ...
Continue ReadingYohan Giaume: Whisper of a Shadow

by Jim Worsley
Collaborations are quite common projects in the jazz world, and in most forms of music, for that matter. Collaborations, however, are slightly more rare when a modern day composer's album is in conjunction with a composer from the nineteenth century. Such is the case with the works of Louis Moreau Gottschalk (1829-1869) melding with composer and trumpeter Yohan Giaume. Giaume has had a deep connection, both musically and intellectually, with Gottschalk for many years. Gottschalk's world travels, influences, and notable ...
Continue ReadingCindy Scott: Historia

by C. Michael Bailey
Stating the obvious right off, vocalist Cindy Scott is from New Orleans. This fact thoroughly and three-dimensionally informs the twelve selections on Historia, Scott's follow-up to Let The Devil Take Tomorrow (Catahoula Records, 2009), without making a burden of it. In subtle and not-so-subtle ways, the aural aroma of the Crescent City appears like an essence, that hyperdistillation that leaves neither finger nor footprint but exists as an indelible mark on the music readily recognised. This mark is made audible ...
Continue ReadingEvan Christopher: The Remembering Song

by Dan Bilawsky
All roads lead to New Orleans for clarinetist Evan Christopher. Christopher left sunny California in the mid-'90s and arrived in NOLA, ready to absorb from--and contribute to--the rich musical environs that only the Crescent City could claim. His initial stay lasted two years, but the city drew him back again in 2001. After Hurricane Katrina came to wreak havoc a few years later, Christopher--like many other musicians from the region--was a man without a home. He spent some time traveling ...
Continue ReadingEvan Christopher's Django a la Creole: Finesse

by Raul d'Gama Rose
The epithet flawless technique" does not even begin to describe Evan Christopher's manner of playing, perhaps, the most challenging reed instrument: the clarinet. His polished intonation is marked by the perfect annunciation of the notes that gush forth from his clarinet sometimes at great speed. His rhythmic attack is so full of surprise, especially when he injects elements of Brazilian and other Latin American colorings into the long, loping lines he plays. He has a spiritual connection with Django Reinhardt ...
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