Jazz Articles about Kenton Loewen

About Kenton Loewen

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

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, ...

Album Review

Gordon Grdina Septet: Resist

by Mike Jurkovic
June 28, 2020

It takes a leap of unconditional faith to enter wholly the resistance. A mindset steadied for the long haul, readied for the next. On his third, integral, must-listen-to release of 2020, Canadian oudist/guitarist/composer Gordon Grdina grandly, darkly, intently, espouses all that and more. Hellbent on creating art as a political act, the sprawling, at times majestic Resist follows the raw and persuasive Nomad (Skirl, 2020), an uncompromising trio outing with pianist Matt Mitchell and drummer Jim Black and the simultaneous ...