Jazz Articles about Jeno Somlai

About Jeno Somlai

Album Review

Funky Chemist: Groove Generator

Read "Groove Generator" reviewed by Chris May

by Chris May
March 28, 2020

You know where you are with organ / guitar / drums trios. The genre is among the most rigorously codified in jazz and has remained fundamentally unchanged since Jimmy Smith erupted on the US scene in the mid 1950s. In large part this is because the tonalities and textures of the Hammond B3 are finite and inflexible, while synths and digital technology in general have opened up limitless keyboard possibilities. The template Smith laid down on A New Sound, A ...

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Album Review

Jeno Somlai: Let It Go

Read "Let It Go" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
January 5, 2005

Jeno Somlai approaches the keyboard with a percussionist's sensibility--rhythm, rhythm, rhythm--here on his debut disc, Let It Go. That's not a surprise, given that the Milwaukee-based musician is primarily a drummer who took up the piano just four years ago. The disc opens with Stevie Wonder's “Golden Lady," sounding sort of like Art Blakey's arrangement for “A Night in Tunisia." The song churns along for eight minutes of hard-driving Latin grooves, lots of percussion and a percussive piano--Somlai's--behind tenor sax ...