Jazz Articles about Jason Roebke

About Jason Roebke

Album Review

Tomeka Reid Quartet: Dance! Skip! Hop!

Read "Dance! Skip! Hop!" reviewed by Jeff Cebulski

by Jeff Cebulski
April 30, 2026

Spring arrives; along with the typical climactic inconsistencies, the jazz market blooms. One of the early blossoms is a minor label treat, Dance! Skip! Hop! from the cellist Tomeka Reid and her quartet. This could be a major season for the adopted Chicagoan Reid, who is also featured on an ECM album from pianist Craig Taborn, Dream Archives (ECM Records, 2026). Dance! Skip! Hop! Is the album of choice, the second album from the quartet that includes the guitarist du jour Mary ...

Album Review

Tomeka Reid Quartet: Dance! Skip! Hop!

Read "Dance! Skip! Hop!" reviewed by Don Ball

by Don Ball
March 19, 2026

If the fourth album from the Tomeka Reid Quartet proves nothing else, it is that the group has shown a remarkable capacity for getting better with each release. Not just in the strength and quality of the compositions, but also through the tightness and cohesiveness of the band. The title Dance! Skip! Hop! is apt for the album as the rhythms roll along through every song, all tying together like an album-long suite. With a band that tends ...

Album Review

Tomeka Reid Quartet: 3+3

by Chris May
May 6, 2024

Jazz cello has come a long way since Fred Katz's pioneering work with Chico Hamilton in the 1950s. Back then, the instrument was looked on as a novelty turn. In 2024, while still relatively avant-garde, its presence in a lineup is less exceptional. A pivotal point was American cellist Adbul Wadud's By Myself (Bishara, 1977), an album Tomeka Reid has acknowledged as an inspiration, and which may have played a part in her transition from classical music to jazz around ...

Album Review

Jeb Bishop Flex Quartet: Re-Collect

Read "Re-Collect" reviewed by John Sharpe

by John Sharpe
July 30, 2020

Trombonist Jeb Bishop doesn't have a whole slew of leadership dates to his credit in spite of being active on the scene since the early 1990s. His most high profile gigs have been as part of the Vandermark 5, and also Peter Brötzmann's Chicago Tentet, though he also has Rob Mazurek's Exploding Star Orchestra and the Steve Lacy repertory outift The Whammies on his resume. All the better then that Re-Collect, a live recording from 2015 by his Flex Quartet, ...

Album Review

Tomeka Reid Quartet: Old New

Read "Old New" reviewed by Ian Patterson

by Ian Patterson
April 19, 2020

Tomeka Reid cut her teeth in Chicago, recording with Anthony Braxton, Roscoe Mitchell and Nicole Mitchell, but the cellist's 2016 move to New York seems to have fired her creative juices even more. The prolific Reid has appeared on nearly twenty recordings in that time, notably including the Art Ensemble of Chicago's We Are On The Edge (Pi Recordings, 2019), and also touring with the group in celebration of its fiftieth anniversary. Given the demands on Reid's time, it is ...

Album Review

Juan Vinuesa Jazz Quartet: Blue Shots From Chicago

Read "Blue Shots From Chicago" reviewed by Mark Corroto

by Mark Corroto
March 10, 2020

Chicago, a city of big shoulders, continues to present proof of poet Carl Sandburg's words from the poem of the same name... “Come and show me another city with lifted head singing so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning." Why is this? Because Chicago in 2020 remains the same as evoked in these words from 1914, “fierce as a dog with tongue lapping for action." It is a city that welcomes all comers who can bring ...

Album Review

Jason Roebke Octet: Cinema Spiral

Read "Cinema Spiral" reviewed by Giuseppe Segala

by Giuseppe Segala
December 22, 2016

La spirale del cinema a cui Jason Roebke si riferisce in questa seconda registrazione con il suo affiatato ottetto porta l'impronta di Alfred Hitchcock, con assonanze che rimandano a Vertigo, sia nel titolo che nel tema musicale che apre il CD e lo percorre tutto, ripresentandosi in altri brani e dando un carattere fortemente unitario al lavoro. Una variazione sul tema di Bernard Herrmann, evidente nel disegno affidato al vibrafono di Jason Adasiewicz, ma pure nel clima generale del brano ...