Jazz Articles about JP Carter

About JP Carter

Album Review

Emad Armoush's Rayhan: Distilled Extractions

Read "Distilled Extractions" reviewed by Mark Corroto

by Mark Corroto
January 26, 2025

Jazz and creative music have always resisted assimilation. By that, I mean jazz draws upon--or perhaps more accurately, appropriates--sounds, traditions and styles to create something entirely new. This has been true since New Orleans musicians blended Caribbean, French, African and Sicilian influences while performing on traditional marching band instruments. Over the century-plus since its inception, improvising musicians have expanded the genre far beyond the boundaries envisioned by their Louisiana originators. Think of artists like John Coltrane, Yusef Lateef, Ahmed Abdul-Malik, ...

Album Review

Sick Boss: Businessless

Read "Businessless" reviewed by Chris May

by Chris May
February 10, 2024

This bracing sophomore album from Vancouver's improvising sextet Sick Boss resonates with the beyond-genre territory of the late Jaimie Branch's Fly Or Die quartet. At a surface level there is the shared use of trumpet and cello, but deeper than that, Businessless embraces the riot grrrl abandon so beloved of Branch. Echoes of Fly Or Die often crop up: the brief melodic motif of opener “Useless Genius 1" is something Branch might have written, as are episodes on other tracks, ...

Album Review

Gordon Grdina: Night's Quietest Hour

Read "Night's Quietest Hour" reviewed by Mark Corroto

by Mark Corroto
September 17, 2022

Gordon Grdina might be proof of the saying “you can't keep a good man down." With Night's Quietest Hour he turns his attention once again to traditional Iraqi and Arabic folk music. This release by his small big band Haram follows Her Eyes illuminate (Songlines, 2012) and includes a guest appearance by Marc Ribot. Much like Ribot's forays into Cuban music with his Los Cubanos Postizos and Frantz Casseus' Haitian compositions, Grdina aspires for musical authenticity without being patronizing. And, ...