Jazz Articles about Jonathan Barber

About Jonathan Barber

Album Review

Joey Alexander: Celestial Keeper

Read "Celestial Keeper" reviewed by Doug Collette

by Doug Collette
July 18, 2026

Joey Alexander may no longer qualify as a prodigy, but his skills as a pianist and composer remain prodigious. The bell-like clarity of the notes ringing out at the outset of “Bemused (solo improv 1)" augurs as much for Celestial Keeper as it does for the now 22-year-old, who follows suit throughout the album. In fact, guest intervals that might otherwise stand as interruptions in the flow of work with his trio of bassist Kris Funn and drummer ...

Album Review

Lakecia Benjamin: We Dream

Read "We Dream" reviewed by Andrew Schinder

by Andrew Schinder
May 29, 2026

In a genre full of peaceniks, Lakecia Benjamin is a killer. Benjamin, the alto saxophonist, vocalist and multi-instrumentalist, has exploded over the course of the 2020's--both figuratively and musically. Her sound is brash and resonant, yet delicately composed and precisely structured. Benjamin is a focused musician, with all of her artistic choices brimming with intent, and the results are positively thrilling. She has become one of contemporary jazz's most popular and revered alto saxophonists, and she is just ...

Album Review

Lakecia Benjamin: We Dream

Read "We Dream" reviewed by Mike Jurkovic

by Mike Jurkovic
May 28, 2026

Lakecia Benjamin is clearly pulling no punches on We Dream. Not that she ever has, given a discography that includes 2020's Pursuance: The Coltranes (Ropeadope Records); 2012's intoxicating, groove-crazy Retox (Motema) or the spellbinding sister releases Phoenix (Whirlwind, 2023) and the super stoked Phoenix ReImagined (Live) (Ropeadope Records, 2024). We Dream drops the mic and leaves the rest up to the listener: What are you going to do to make the world a better place today? Excitable and ...

Album Review

Margherita Fava: Murrina

Read "Murrina" reviewed by Geannine Reid

by Geannine Reid
January 4, 2026

The hum of modern jazz is strong from the first notes of Murrina. Margherita Fava emerges as a creative force at the piano with her crystalline single notes and cascade of piano chords that shimmer with the microcosms of the modern jazz piano tradition. Recorded in the autumn of 2025, the album captures a trio that performs as one organism, each instrument sculpting space with deliberate intent. Produced by Fava, the session benefits from the keen ears of engineer Eric Sills, ...

Album Review

Julieta Eugenio: Stay

by Angelo Leonardi
October 4, 2024

Dopo la cilena Melissa Aldana, s'impone a New York un'altra giovane sassofonista sudamericana, l'argentina Julieta Eugenio, di un anno e qualche mese più giovane. Come già fece Melissa nel 2010 con l'album Free Fall anche Julieta ha debuttato con un pianoless trio (Jump, Greenleaf 2022), organico che ora ripropone con gli stessi partner, il contrabbassista Matt Dwonszyk e il batterista Jonathan Barber. In due brani dell'album, Leo Genovese si aggiunge al Fender Rhodes. Gli ...

Album Review

Julieta Eugenio: Stay

by Dan McClenaghan
March 31, 2024

Argentina-born saxophonist Julieta Eugenio takes four breaths ("Breaths" I through IV), that she calls “short, intimate moments," in her ongoing endeavors in this (mostly) trio-format album. The saxophone, bass and drums setup is one of the most intimate. Think Sonny Rollins in Way Out West (Contemporary, 1957) and A Night At The Village Vanguard (Blue Note, 1958), a pair of uncluttered, groundbreaking, chordless outings that stand up as classics of the format. Eugenio has proven herself marvelously ...

Catching Up With

Jonathan Barber: Blazing Forward

by K. Shackelford
May 11, 2023

Jonathan Barber is a force to be reckoned with. Pulling out a drum solo with just one high hat, making it an artful and meaningful rhythm to the composition at hand with intentional rhythmic sonority is rare. Yet this is one example of the ways that Jonathan Barber pulls out a surfeit of ideas from his drum set, which is a distinctive feature of his musical caginess. He's also taking jazz into a futuristic, digimodernism path. Recently, Barber ...