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Alex Hitchcock: Dream Band: Live in London
by Glenn Astarita
This is a bold expedition into the heart of progressive jazz, rendered across a vast canvas of three enthralling nights at the Vortex Jazz Club in London. This three-CD collection is not just a mere album, but a grand, audacious gathering of talents which blurs the line between a larger ensemble setup and a more intimate, modern band experience. Hitchcock's nifty approach to ensemble creation is at the core of this live recording. Rather than sticking ...
read moreMatthieu Bordenave: The Blue Land
by Mike Jurkovic
Getting across the great open land beneath big sky country is full of epic moments. The Blue Land, French saxophonist Matthieu Bordenave's second for ECM, is that migrant's diary. As he so skillfully rendered on his 2020 ECM debut La Traversée, Bordenave again enters the studio conjoined with the assertive mood swings of bassist Patrice Moretand the rapidly moving divertimentos of pianist Florian Weber. Only this time he adds to that valorous energy the meatier, Art Blakey-like sentiments ...
read moreAlex Hitchcock: Dream Band Live In London
by Chris May
Viewed in retrospect, the abiding memory of 2023 is that it produced too many jazz albums prioritizing technical facility over emotional engagement. In London, New York and elsewhere (but not, so it seemed, in Chicago), musicians appeared to focus on virtuosity rather than feeling. Dullsville. For the record, some of those albums that did put soul on, at the least, an equal footing with cerebralism, are to be found in the Best Albums of 2023 round-up which can be read ...
read moreMoss Freed / Union Division: Micromotives
by John Sharpe
A question any composer for improvisers must face is whether they can create something more worthwhile than what they might come up with if left to themselves. It can be a tough call. For some, such as Alexander von Schlippenbach's Globe Unity Orchestra or Peter Brötzmann's Chicago Tentet, the ultimate conclusion was no, while for others such as Anthony Braxton and Barry Guy the answer has been far less clear cut. British guitarist Moss Freed falls somewhere between the two ...
read moreTrish Clowes: A View with a Room
by Vincenzo Roggero
My Iris è un quartetto guidato dalla sassofonista inglese Trish Clowes giunto con A View with a Room alla quarta fatica discografica. Nato in tempo di lockdown, con riferimenti, a partire dal titolo, alle criticità provocate dalla pandemia, sviluppato attraverso live streams e pubblicato dalla prestigiosa Greenleaf di Dave Douglas, A View With a Room conferma Clowes come una delle voci più interessanti della effervescente scena britannica, incarnandone il volto gentile e raffinato. La sonorità sia al ...
read moreKit Downes, Petter Eldh, James Maddren: Vermillion
by Mike Jurkovic
It shouldn't be tough to tell an artist open to alternate creation that their initial ideas behind any work of art—music, novel, portrait, sculpture—missed the intended target but the fall zone yielded some truly ecstatic, celebratory moments. Quite a few of them to be exact. In the promo attending his third album for ECM, classically trained pianist and killer organ scholar Kit Downes reveals that, as these fruitful sessions got underway in May/June 2021 at Auditorio Stelio Molo ...
read moreIvo Neame: Glimpses of Truth
by Chris May
"The Rise of The Lizard People," the title of the scene-setting opening track on Ivo Neame's Glimpses Of Truth, was prompted by an article Neame read which claimed that 12 million Americans believe that interstellar lizards run the United States. Only 12 million? In a country with a population approaching 332 million, around half of whose voters are idiots and conspiracy theorists, one might imagine that a far greater number would be feeling threatened by shape-shifting reptiles. To be fair, ...
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