Jazz Articles about Jeremy Pelt

About Jeremy Pelt

Radio & Podcasts

Trumpet Master Jeremy Pelt - Hard Bop and More

by Russell Perry
June 1, 2021

Emerging as a recording artist in 2002, trumpeter Jeremy Pelt's warm tone and thoughtful improvisation initially brought hard bop legends Lee Morgan and Freddie Hubbard to mind. After two decades, his mature post-bop work evidences a willingness to experiment with sound and ensemble make-up. Miles Davis's Second Great Quintet and his electric period both emerge as influences from time-to-time interspersed with straight ahead acoustic dates. You can count on Jeremy Pelt for inventive improvisation, impeccable tone, nuanced performance and a ...

Album Review

Chien Chien Lu: The Path

Read "The Path" reviewed by Dan Bilawsky

by Dan Bilawsky
September 26, 2020

For vibraphonist Chien Chien Lu, the path to jazz wasn't direct. She rode a contemporary classical percussion track into her twenties in her native Taiwan, but, as it turned out, that drive was less about reaching a destination than it was about the act of discovery: A growing desire for musical freedom and adventure eventually set Chien Chien on a different course, steering her toward jazz and a life in New York. Now, after making herself comfortable in the jazz ...

Album Review

Black Art Jazz Collective: Ascension

Read "Ascension" reviewed by Ian Patterson

by Ian Patterson
August 30, 2020

The name has obvious political resonance. Indeed, the raison d'être of the Black Art Jazz Collective, the sextet founded by Wayne Escoffery, Jeremy Pelt and Jonathon Blake in 2013, is to celebrate African American excellence on the one hand, and--not unrelated--to raise political consciousness on the other. The BAJC's debut album,Presented By The Side Door Jazz Club (Sunnyside Records, 2016) paid homage to W. E. B. Dubois and Barack Obama, while recalling, too, the history of slavery. Ascension plows a ...

Album Review

Gerald Cleaver & Vioilet Hour: Live at Firehouse 12

Read "Live at Firehouse 12" reviewed by Stefano Merighi

by Stefano Merighi
August 28, 2020

Gerald Cleaver incarna brillantemente la versione versatile del jazzista contemporaneo. Batterista e compositore, origini a Detroit, Cleaver giostra con fierezza e senso funambolico all'interno di tutti gli stili dominanti nella scena odierna. Può contribuire alla raffinatezza di gruppi accasati alla ECM, navigare a vista in organici del tutto sperimentali ("Farmers by Nature," “Black Host"), mantenere legami di lunga data con autori affini o inaugurarne di inediti come quello con Larry Ochs (il duo “Songs in the Wild Cave" ...

Album Review

Black Art Jazz Collective: Ascension

Read "Ascension" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
August 24, 2020

On Ascension, the Black Art Jazz Collective, a like-minded sextet co-founded in 2012 by trumpeter Jeremy Pelt and saxophonist Wayne Escoffery to salute the artistry of their mentors and musical heroes while moving the idiom forward into the twenty-first century, is unbending in its allegiance to the straight-ahead canon espoused by the architects of modern jazz. It's a stance that gives rise to pluses and minuses. On the upside, this is splendid music, rhythmically and melodically pleasing, ...

Album Review

Connie Han: Iron Starlet

Read "Iron Starlet" reviewed by C. Andrew Hovan

by C. Andrew Hovan
August 10, 2020

At the 2019 Detroit Jazz Festival, pianist Connie Han dazzled the crowd with a superb and well-paced set which was one of the best performances of the weekend. Although her Mack Avenue debut, Crime Zone, had hit the streets in 2018, Han's musical acumen was still hovering below the radar of most jazz listeners. The key to Han's refreshing approach is that she operates in a zone that respects the lexicon while also finding new territory of its own to ...

Album Review

Larry Willis: I Fall in Love Too Easily

Read "I Fall in Love Too Easily" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
July 20, 2020

I Fall in Love Too Easily is subtitled “The Final Session at Rudy Van Gelder's," as it is not only descriptively but literally the last recording session by veteran pianist Larry Willis, who died at age seventy-six in September 2019, one year after the album was completed at the renowned Van Gelder studio in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey. The occasion also represented a homecoming of sorts for Willis who launched his six-decades-long career at that same studio in 1965, cutting ...