Jazz Articles about Joanna Majoko

About Joanna Majoko

Album Review

Joaquin Nuñez: Ruta De La Clave

Read "Ruta De La Clave" reviewed by Richard J Salvucci

by Richard J Salvucci
July 8, 2025

Ruta de la Clave is everything a good recording should be: listenable, stimulating, thoughtful, a bit eclectic and, above all, musical. Joaquín Núñez and Habana Safari has set out to do a version of the “history of the clave." Of course, this is a unique vision, a distillation of Núñez's experiences as a Cuban-Canadian percussionist. But his overall goal is considerably greater, “a reinvention of Afro-Cuban jazz." That is a pretty tall order. Others will say ...

Album Review

Jon Gordon: 7th Ave South

Read "7th Ave South" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
November 29, 2024

Some of life's moments, even when buried in the past, remain almost as fresh and memorable as today's. Such is alto saxophonist Jon Gordon's memory of his first visit to New York City's then-jazz center, Greenwich Village's 7th Avenue South, which was “the first place [he] ever heard live jazz in New York." That was in 1983--nearly four decades ago--but that memory and those that followed were enough to inspire Gordon's latest album, appropriately titled 7th Ave South.

Album Review

Laila Biali: Wintersongs

Read "Wintersongs" reviewed by Pierre Giroux

by Pierre Giroux
November 10, 2024

Laila Biali is an award-winning Canadian singer-songwriter and pianist whose recording Wintersongs offers an immersive journey into the delicate beauty and serene power of winter all through the lens of her jazz and classical roots. With two exceptions, all tracks were composed by Biali in a cabin surrounded by snow-capped mountains in the heart of Canada's Rocky Mountains. Many of Biali's usual collaborators participated in this production, including drummer Ben Wittman, renowned flutist and soprano saxophonist Jane Bunnett, accomplished trumpeter ...

Album Review

Jon Gordon: 7th Ave South

Read "7th Ave South" reviewed by Pierre Giroux

by Pierre Giroux
June 7, 2024

Jon Gordon, an alto and soprano saxophonist, steps into the limelight with his latest release 7th Ave South, a melodic memoir of a transformative place for jazz history in the early 1980s. This journey is a testament to the fascination of discovery and the allure of artistic camaraderie four decades later. In this ten-track outing of primarily original compositions (with two exceptions), Gordon, a music professor at the University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada, is accompanied by fellow faculty members or ...