Jazz Articles about Glenn Zaleski

About Glenn Zaleski

Album Review

Gabriel Vicéns: The Way We Are Created

Read "The Way We Are Created" reviewed by Mark Sullivan

by Mark Sullivan
November 11, 2021

Puerto Rican jazz guitarist & composer Gabriel Vicéns has been living in New York City since 2016 but, for this album, he chose to explore traditional Puerto Rican music (Bomba and Plena—music and dance styles born from African slavery and Caribbean influences) blended with his own compositional style. He was also exposed to Cuban Changüí, and began incorporating some stylistic devices from it into his guitar playing. The title tune begins the program with an infectious ostinato pattern ...

Album Review

Mareike Wiening: Future Memories

Read "Future Memories" reviewed by Mark Corroto

by Mark Corroto
October 19, 2021

It is interesting that in today's creative music world, a jazz drummer cannot just be a jazz drummer. There are so many great drummers that they have to also be composers, band leaders, and sometimes van drivers. A short list includes Tyshawn Sorey, Allison Miller, Ches Smith, and Terri Lyne Carrington. Add to that list Mareike Wiening, the German-born artist with (now) deep New York roots. Her release Metropolis Paradise (Greenleaf Music, 2019) brought her music critical attention and acclaim, ...

Album Review

Roberto Pianca Sub Rosa: Mono No Aware

Read "Mono No Aware" reviewed by Friedrich Kunzmann

by Friedrich Kunzmann
May 15, 2021

The Roberto Pianca-led ensemble Sub Rosa's second release is a concentrated exercise in inter-communicative restraint, subtlety and woven odd meters that provokes the mind while consoling the soul. It's a cool affair that profits from the individual talents' accurate performances and inquisitive spirits as much as the leader's proficiently crafted compositions. Where the predecessor, self-titled Sub Rosa (Wide Ear Records, 2013) was a rather rigorously tempered and vigorously executed display of broad technical virtuosity, Mono No Aware scales things back ...

Album Review

Tomoko Omura: Branches Vol. 1

Read "Branches Vol. 1" reviewed by Friedrich Kunzmann

by Friedrich Kunzmann
January 7, 2021

Violinists come in many shapes, colors and sizes. In jazz, there are those who bridge the gap between classical music and a more improvised repertoire seamlessly, as seen with pioneers such as American avant-gardist Mark Feldman. There are others who go about their craft with a more rootsy approach to the improvised music tradition—as heard with virtuosos like Regina Carter. And then of course there's everything in between, from old guard veterans like Stephane Grappelli (also known as ...

Album Review

Tomoko Omura: Branches Vol. 1

Read "Branches Vol. 1" reviewed by Nicholas F. Mondello

by Nicholas F. Mondello
September 10, 2020

With Branches Vol. 1, award-winning violinist Tomoro Omura dives deep into exploring textures and melodic invention drawn from Japanese folklore. This effort is a contemporized display which validates Omura's vast instrumental abilities and also channels Japanese folklore as a launch-point for her superior composition skills. The recording is seductive, deeply emotional and meditative, and, simultaneously, elegantly refined. The album offers six tracks, each a fascinating voyage. “Moonlight in Vermont" gets such a re-imagined, polyrhythmic treatment that one ...

Album Review

Tomoko Omura: Branches Vol. 1

Read "Branches Vol. 1" reviewed by Mike Jurkovic

by Mike Jurkovic
August 28, 2020

If, as you start to yield willingly to the sumptuous, hypnotic Branches, Vol. 1, you should need to walk away and attend to other home/bunker business, try to keep at least one ear on the music. From any point in any room you might hear a gypsy laugh, a lover cry, a Celtic reel. A marvelous new touch on a centuries old instrument, bringing the ages together, gathering all the ley lines into one bustling hub. A rising ...

Album Review

Nick Finzer: Cast Of Characters

Read "Cast Of Characters" reviewed by Friedrich Kunzmann

by Friedrich Kunzmann
March 27, 2020

Trombonist Nick Finzer's fifth album as a leader is a strong testament to his musical influences expressed by through-designed compositions and lively interplay. On Cast of Characters , the New York-based musician, composer and label owner has gathered all of his forces together to deliver a concentrated, conceptual exercise in arrangement and instrumentation, which lives off of the impeccable performances of the individual musicians as much as it does off of the compositional material at hand. Traditional swing-and ...