Jazz Articles about Jeff Swanson

About Jeff Swanson

Album Review

Nearly five years after his debut album Altitude (BASE Records, 2020), Chicago trumpeter Connor Bernhard gathered most of that album's cohorts for his second recording as a leader, Pathways. What also returns is the same bright, engaging horn that distinguishes Bernhard and lifts the proceedings significantly. His band--the three repeaters Julius Tucker on piano, Jeff Swanson on guitar, and Clif Wallace on drums, joined by Evan Salvacion Levine on bass--follows through with their own engaging support. The unusual combination of ...

Album Review

Dustin Laurenzi's Natural Language: A Time And A Place

Read "A Time And A Place" reviewed by Mark Corroto

by Mark Corroto
October 27, 2020

When Chicago tenor saxophonist Dustin Laurenzi dedicates a song “Albert" on A Time And A Place to the the Holy Ghost of the avant- garde, Albert Ayler, he doesn't follow what most impersonators do and scream “ALBERT" at you. He builds upon a simple melody pattern (Ayler-like) patiently magnifying the intensity and fervor. Unlike Ayler, whose music hinted he wouldn't live long (he died at 34), Laurenzi's invocation maintains an equanimity within the eruption. That's just Laurenzi being Laurenzi.