Jazz Articles about Joe Fonda

About Joe Fonda

Album Review

Most jazz groups that stay together for a long time, such as The Modern Jazz Quartet or The Art Ensemble of Chicago, achieve a certain prominence. It is a surprise then to realize that the lesser-known band, Conference Call, has been around since 1999 and is here releasing its eighth album. The group's core members are saxophonist Gebhard Ullmann, pianist Michael Jefry Stevens and bassist Joe Fonda. They have had a succession of drummers over the years; Matt ...

Album Review

Conference Call: Prism

Read "Prism" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
September 21, 2020

Prism, by the band Conference Call, sounds, on the set's opening tune, “F.J.D.," like a bunch of guys who might mug you: a brash, turbulent, confrontational crowd with a “we-don't-take-no-mess-from-nobody" approach to making music. Credit reedman Gebhard Ullmann with his grouchy, working-man-roused-from-his-afternoon-nap tenor sax sound, and the powerful bass (which you can feel in your bones) of Joe Fonda, accompanied by the aggressive clamor of, Dieter Ulrich--the group's third drummer in its twenty year tenure—along with pianist Michael Jefry Stevens' ...

Album Review

Conference Call: Prism

by Mike Jurkovic
September 19, 2020

During the roiling twenty years that Conference Call has willfully crisscrossed the broad Atlantic, the individual drummers haven't participated in all of the round trips. The pre-2020 drummer rotation was Matt Wilson, who left the band prior to its first tour in 2001 to prep for the delivery of triplets, Han Bennink, George Schuller, and Gerry Hemingway. But the core players remain. As does the key aesthetic: creative art as spontaneous geometry. So how you fit the individual pieces together ...

Radio & Podcasts

Benny Golson, Joshua Breakstone and More

by Joe Dimino
November 10, 2019

This week we focus on avant-garde bassist Joe Fonda. We recently interviewed Joe, who has a new release with the OGJB Quartet along with a duo recording with pianist Satoko Fujii. We also feature the music of Wadada Leo Smith and move our way into a bright young cat with fresh grooves, Nikola Bankov. Legendary saxophonist Benny Golson came through Kansas City in mid-October 2019 and we got plenty from him during this hour. Finally, we catch up with a ...

Album Review

Joe Fonda: New Origin

Read "New Origin" reviewed by Mike Jurkovic

by Mike Jurkovic
June 11, 2019

On New Origin veteran bassist Joe Fonda and drummer Harvey Sorgen—(Ahmad Jamal, Dewy Redman) boldly return to the passion that forged Dreamstruck (Not Two, 2018), their unstoppable trio excursion with Marilyn Crispell. Sworn architects of reverberant depth and the collective accord separating us from AI, the vets team this time with the equally free thinking European clarinetist Christophe Rocher —Paul Rogers, John Stevens—to unravel the Gordian Knot presented by the music of New Origin. “Read This," one of ...

Album Review

Christophe Rocher / Joe Fonda / Harvey Sorgen: New Origin

Read "New Origin" reviewed by John Sharpe

by John Sharpe
May 11, 2019

As the title implies, New Origin represents a fertile coming together, the principals in this case being the veteran American rhythm team of bassist Joe Fonda and drummer Harvey Sorgen, with French clarinetist Christophe Rocher. Fonda and Sorgen share a lengthy association, which encompasses the long-running Fonda/Stevens Group and a trio of more recent vintage with pianist Marilyn Crispell among others. Rocher, a generation younger, has risen on his native scene and also featured alongside the likes of flautist Nicole ...

Album Review

Nu Band: Live In Geneva

Read "Live In Geneva" reviewed by John Sharpe

by John Sharpe
January 4, 2018

Everything must change as the Nina Simone song puts it. That's as true in music as anywhere else, and changing one of the parts inevitably affects the whole. When NYC-based German trumpeter Thomas Heberer replaced the late lamented Roy Campbell in The Nu Band, it must have been heart-in-mouth time for colleagues bassist Joe Fonda, reedman Mark Whitecage and drummer Lou Grassi. Two years down the road, everything has fallen into place on the second album from the new line-up. ...