Jazz Articles about James Shipp

About James Shipp

Album Review

Anat Cohen's Quartetinho emerged from her Tentet with a self-titled album in 2022 (Anat Cohen Quartetinho, Anzic). It is a mighty little group, enhanced by doubling: Vitor Gonçalves plays accordion and piano, Tal Mashiach is on bass and guitar, James Shipp handles vibes, marimba and percussion, Cohen on clarinets. For Bloom, the band's second album, each musician contributed new compositions, generating a harmonious program that mingles flamenco (Mashiach's “Paco") with tango (Gonçalves' “Tango Para Guillermo") and ...

Album Review

Remy Le Boeuf: Architecture of Storms

Read "Architecture of Storms" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
November 2, 2023

It's hard to become bored or complacent when listening to Architecture of Storms, alto saxophonist Remy Le Boeuf's second album as leader of the twenty-member Assembly of Shadows orchestra. Every song is quite different from the others, and every one has its moments of shapeliness and charm. Le Boeuf arranged every number and composed all but Justin Vernon's “Minnesota, WI" and the album's nameplate, which he co-wrote with poet Sara Pirkle, he asserts, “on a brooding stormy ...

Album Review

Miho Hazama M_Unit: Beyond Orbits

Read "Beyond Orbits" reviewed by Angelo Leonardi

by Angelo Leonardi
October 2, 2023

Uno degli eventi al Monterey Jazz Festival del 2021 è stato il concerto dell'M_Unit di Miho Hazama, la giovane compositrice e bandleader giapponese che s'è imposta tra le figure più innovative della sua generazione. In quell'occasione Hazama ha presentato la suite in tre movimenti “Exoplanet" che--incisa poi in studio--costituisce il fulcro del disco appena pubblicato dalla Edition Records. Chi conosce i suoi lavori di questi anni, sa quanto la scrittura della bandleader risulti coinvolgente per l'abilità di ...

Album Review

Miho Hazama's M_Unit: Beyond Orbits

Read "Beyond Orbits" reviewed by Chris May

by Chris May
September 29, 2023

Beyond Orbits is the fêted composer and conductor Miho Hazama's fourth album with M_Unit. She founded the band in 2012, two years after moving from Tokyo to New York and while she was still studying for a masters in jazz composition at the Manhattan School of Music. Hazama released M_Unit's first album in 2013. The band's third, Dancer In Nowhere (Sunnyside, 2019), was nominated for a Grammy. Among her other achievements, Hazama was in 2019 appointed chief ...

Album Review

Nadje Noordhuis + James Shipp: Multitudes

Read "Multitudes" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
June 30, 2023

Trumpeter Nadje Noordhuis and percussionist/synthesist James Shipp have proven to be a most compelling pair. Their Indigo (Little Mystery, 2017)--a duo album built on a shared outlook and fellow feeling--was a faithful introduction to the sound of simpatico souls in musical motion. And this eagerly awaited follow-up, while playing true to this continuing story of two, is largely about the art of expansion. Eager to take their partnership to a new place by broadening design concepts through an extended creative ...

Album Review

Anat Cohen: Quartetinho

Read "Quartetinho" reviewed by Mike Jurkovic

by Mike Jurkovic
November 2, 2022

As it has manifested on world stages and such noteworthy releases as Luminosa and Claroscuro (Anzic Records, 2015, 2012), Grammy-nominated clarinetist, composer & bandleader Anat Cohen's deep fascination and delight with world music, especially Brazil's hot melding of South African rhythms, cajun swing, and European dance, makes Quartetinhoan irrepressible listen. Infused and bursting with a multitude of melody left, right, and center, the charismatic Cohen takes a few steps back from her masterful tentet outing Triple Helix(Anzic, 2019) ...

Album Review

Remy Le Boeuf's Assembly of Shadows: Architecture of Storms

Read "Architecture of Storms" reviewed by Angelo Leonardi

by Angelo Leonardi
January 24, 2022

Remy Le Boeuf è uno dei nomi emergenti nell'ambito dell'arrangiamento e della conduzione orchestrale. Dopo il sorprendente Assembly of Shadows del 2019, il sassofonista e bandleader californiano (a New York dal 2004) torna con la sua orchestra irrobustita nel numero e nella qualità dei singoli componenti. Tra i nuovi ingressi troviamo in particolare il trombettista Mike Rodriguez e il sassofonista Dayna Stephens, che caratterizzano un paio di brani, anche se il lavoro di Le Boeuf è prettamente ...