Jazz Articles about Kevin Axt

About Kevin Axt

Album Review

Jazz vocalist and songwriter Sylvia Brooks embarks on an ambitious lyrical odyssey on her sixth recording, Soliloquy, released on SBM Records. As a classically trained mezzo-soprano with a three-octave range, Brooks utilizes an expressive and agile instrument to illuminate the challenges, heartbreaks, and wonders of life. The album is framed as a work of Lyric Jazz comprising four standards and four originals co-written with pianist and arranger Christian Jacob, backed by a talented band. The project brings together strong artistic ...

Album Review

Eddie Daniels: To Milton With Love

Read "To Milton With Love" reviewed by Artur Moral

by Artur Moral
February 14, 2026

Even in a field as conducive to covers as jazz, it is unusual to find a complete reinterpretation of an album with all its tracks in their original order. Interestingly, 2025 has seen several releases of this type, some widely known and deservedly acclaimed, like Branford Marsalis' Belonging (Blue Note Records, 2025), which pays homage to Keith Jarrett's European Quartet. But another project with these same characteristics has gone much more unnoticed, and unjustly so. To Milton With Love is ...

Album Review

Gabe Katell: Hear, It Is

Read "Hear, It Is" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
January 7, 2026

After years of paying his dues by gigging around with groups large and small in southern California, baritone saxophonist Gabe Katell has recorded Hear, It Is, the first album with his name above the marquee, and an impressive one it is, both musically and strategically. To ensure its musical success, Katell enlisted the help of three top-notch side musicians--pianist Adam Hersh, bassist Kevin Axt, drummer Kevin Van Den Elzen--who together form a seamless unit that is communal and ...

Album Review

Bob Schlesinger: Falling From Earth

Read "Falling From Earth" reviewed by Joshua Weiner

by Joshua Weiner
December 20, 2025

Many a music project was derailed by the COVID-19 pandemic, but Colorado-based pianist, composer, and educator Bob Schlesinger's Falling From Earth (Self-Produced, 2025) has had a longer gestation and more interesting rebirth than most. With funding from the Pathways to Jazz fund, part of the Boulder County Arts Alliance, Schelsinger initially planned for his first release as a leader to be a trio album with legendary Bill Evans bassist Eddie Gomez and drummer Billy Drummond, whose expansive career with many ...

Album Review

Lauren White: Making It Up As We Go Along

Read "Making It Up As We Go Along" reviewed by Nicholas F. Mondello

by Nicholas F. Mondello
March 9, 2024

With this, her fifth album, Los Angeles-based Renaissance lady, Lauren White offers eleven intriguing selections across a range of styles and sources, backed up by some of the city's best. While shrewdly avoiding the tried, true and over-recorded, White uses her subtle skills with taste and maturity. Interestingly, the album plays sequentially as if it were a performance. That is one of its attractions. Launching things, Steely Dan's “I'm Not the Same Without You" is a coy ...

Album Review

Jeremy Cohen: Raymond Scott Reimagined

Read "Raymond Scott Reimagined" reviewed by Walter Atkins

by Walter Atkins
July 25, 2023

Raymond Scott Reimagined is an engaging collaborative project with Quartet San Francisco, Gordon Goodwin's Big Phat Band and the Grammy winning acapella group Take 6 on two tracks. The album is a thoughtful and stylish interpretation of Raymond Scott's legacy. It is also interspersed with audio tidbits featuring Scott's singular musical approaches. The album kicks off with the enticing “Powerhouse," familiar to anyone who has watched a Warner Bros Looney Tunes cartoon. “Toy Trumpet" is a tasty composition ...

Album Review

Grant Geissman: Blooz

Read "Blooz" reviewed by Richard J Salvucci

by Richard J Salvucci
October 27, 2022

There are several ways of judging the success of a recording. Perhaps a hearing makes the listener, if a musician, want to sit in and jam. That is a good sign. Then there is the “sit still test." For many, the direct, emotional and physical connection between music and brain leaves them simply hanging out, absence of motion impossible, sitting still not an option. Grant Geissman's Blooz happily passes both tests. Turn the volume up and a blues party comes ...