Jazz Articles about James Maddren

About James Maddren

Album Review

Matthieu Bordenave: The Blue Land

Read "The Blue Land" reviewed by Mike Jurkovic

by Mike Jurkovic
February 7, 2024

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 ...

Album Review

Alex Hitchcock: Dream Band Live In London

Read "Dream Band Live In London" reviewed by Chris May

by Chris May
January 18, 2024

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 ...

Album Review

Moss Freed / Union Division: Micromotives

Read "Micromotives" reviewed by John Sharpe

by John Sharpe
August 11, 2023

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 ...

Album Review

Trish Clowes: A View with a Room

Read "A View with a Room" reviewed by Vincenzo Roggero

by Vincenzo Roggero
May 17, 2022

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 ...

Album Review

Kit Downes, Petter Eldh, James Maddren: Vermillion

Read "Vermillion" reviewed by Mike Jurkovic

by Mike Jurkovic
February 7, 2022

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 ...

Album Review

Ivo Neame: Glimpses of Truth

Read "Glimpses of Truth" reviewed by Chris May

by Chris May
November 26, 2021

"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, ...

Album Review

Ferg Ireland Trio: Ferg Ireland Trio

Read "Ferg Ireland Trio" reviewed by Chris May

by Chris May
June 4, 2021

Bassist Ferg Ireland is a young London lion whose recent credits include pianist Ashley Henry's Beautiful Vinyl Hunter (Sony, 2019) and tenor saxophonist Alex Hitchcock's AUB (Edition, 2020), stonking albums both. On his own-name debut album, Ireland is joined by drummer James Maddren, who is probably best known for his work with the piano-less trio led by tenor saxophonist Josephine Davies, beloved of this parish. Completing the trio is alto saxophonist Nathaniel Facey, the lineup's relative elder ...