Jazz Articles about Kenny Wollesen

About Kenny Wollesen

Album Review

Frank London: Touzle Your Kurchy

Read "Touzle Your Kurchy" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
September 21, 2026

Trumpeter Frank London has never been one to color neatly inside the historical lines. Known for his groundbreaking work with the Klezmer Conservatory Band and The Klezmatics, the restless downtown maestro has spent decades detonating cultural boundaries. With the Loisaida Fife and Drum Corps, he turns his sights toward eighteenth-and nineteenth-century Americana, dragging dusty martial traditions into a sweaty, musical block party. The album borrows its title from an antique Scots-English fife-and-drum tune--a flirtatious dare to rumple someone's kerchief--and that ...

Album Review

Julian Lage: Scenes From Above

Read "Scenes From Above" reviewed by Jack Kenny

by Jack Kenny
April 28, 2026

There are always expectations when Julian Lage plays: effortless, assured virtuosity and melodic finesse. Those qualities are present here, but they are deliberately understated, subsumed within a broader emphasis on collective interplay. Produced by Joe Henry, the album resists any attempt to remake Speak to Me. Instead, Lage sought to create an egalitarian session, explicitly avoiding a leader-centric approach. As he has suggested, this was not about “I'm the leader--let's build something around me," but rather about fostering ...

Album Review

Sylvie Courvoisier: Eclats - Live in Europe

Read "Eclats - Live in Europe" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
April 19, 2026

Sylvie Courvoisier has never been easy to pin down, which is exactly the point. The Lausanne-born pianist moved to New York City in 1998 and spent the next two-plus decades making herself indispensable to the downtown avant-garde, working alongside John Zorn, Evan Parker, Wadada Leo Smith, and Mark Feldman, among others. She received the Swiss Grand Prix Music and an American Academy of Arts and Letters Music Award in 2025, recognition that felt overdue rather than surprising. Her long-running piano ...

Album Review

Emi Makabe: Echo

by Angelo Leonardi
September 29, 2025

Conferma il quartetto del suo esordio (Anniversary Greenleaf 2018) la cantante a strumentista giapponese Emi Makabe, con l'aggiunta di tre prestigiosi ospiti: il chitarrista Bill Frisell, il pianista Jason Moran e la bassista Meshell Ndegeocello, che interviene declamando alcuni testi. Anche in quest'album s'incrociano stilemi giapponesi e jazzistici in una miscela generalmente delicata e suadente, anche se non mancano momenti ritmicamente articolati. Emi Makabe ha una voce da soprano leggero, canta con raffinata essenzialità e interviene suonando lo ...

Album Review

Pitch, Rhythm and Consciousness: Sextet

Read "Sextet" reviewed by Alberto Bazzurro

by Alberto Bazzurro
May 7, 2025

Dopo un primo album in trio (2011) e un secondo in quartetto (2019), Pitch, Rhythm and Consciousness, il gruppo fondato da Tony Jones e Charlie Burnham (qui impegnato nei primi due brani anche alla voce) si amplia a sestetto per questo suo nuovo lavoro (inciso alla fine del 2023), evidenziando specificità di organico (e quindi timbriche e nel contempo dinamiche) assolutamente nuove, raddoppiando anzitutto i sassofoni tenore, che non disdegnano cavalcate a due voci di sicuro appeal (anche senza accompagnamento ...

Album Review

Pitch, Rhythm and Consciousness: Sextet

Read "Sextet" reviewed by Thierry De Clemensat

by Thierry De Clemensat
April 22, 2025

Pitch, Rhythm and Consciousness is a collective of musicians who stand among the most representative of the New York jazz scene in 2025. Initially formed as a quartet, the group was founded by Tony Jones and Charlie Burnham, two of the most captivating artists of the ensemble, who are later joined by Kenny Wollesen, Marika Hughes, Jessica Jones and Rashaan Carter. Given the group's initial configuration, it is evident that their music and compositions are not meant for ...

Album Review

Kenny Wollesen: LATRALA

Read "LATRALA" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
August 29, 2024

When a February 2022 gig at John Zorn's experimental showcase The Stone was unexpectedly canceled due to Covid protocol, Wollesen seized the lemon juicer and booked the band into Shahzad Ismaily's famed Figure 8 studio in Brooklyn for the following two days. The session was engineered by Lily Wen and produced by Will Shore, a composer who plays vibes alongside Wollesen in the utopian art-jazz group Užupis. Playing together for the first time, LATRALA recorded nearly the entire album and ...