Home » Jazz Articles » Leo Genovese
Jazz Articles about Leo Genovese
Julieta Eugenio: Stay
by Dan McClenaghan
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 ...
Continue ReadingFrank Carlberg Large Ensemble: Elegy for Thelonious
by Jerome Wilson
Pianist Frank Carlberg has been exploring the music of Thelonious Monk for some time, most specifically on his large group album, Monk Dreams, Hallucinations, and Nightmares, (Sunnyside, 2017). This new album has Carlberg returning to the large ensemble format for more Monk investigations, but this time approaching the work in a more splintered and abstract fashion. He does not simply interpret familiar Monk tunes. He writes compositions and arrangements which stitch Monk riffs and ideas into new fabrics, ...
Continue ReadingFrank Carlberg Large Ensemble: Elegy for Thelonious
by Mark Corroto
There was a sardonic saying circulating a few years ago that observed, “It's Frank Sinatra's world, we just live in it." While that was a backhanded compliment, tailoring it to the subject of this large ensemble recording, we would call it a commendation. Pianist, composer, and conductor Frank Carlberg is telling us, “It's Thelonious Monk's world, and (thank god) we live in it." Carlberg has been a disciple of Monk for decades, recording his music in a piano trio format ...
Continue ReadingDave Liebman: Live at Smalls
by Alberto Bazzurro
Tre ampi brani per un totale che supera di un po' i settanta minuti di musica tirata e vibrante, colta dal vivo nel gennaio 2022 al celebre jazz club newyorchese, compongono questo notevole nuovo lavoro di Dave Liebman, una delle presenze più significative (e incidenti) della scena jazzistica ormai da oltre quarant'anni. Il gruppo protagonista dell'incisione, del resto, è di prima grandezza, a partire dal pirotecnico (ma mai per miracol mostrare, come si suol dire) trombettista Peter Evans, che si ...
Continue ReadingColette Michaan: Earth Rebirth
by Katchie Cartwright
Colette Michaan's bamboo flute calls out over a looming drone as Earth Rebirth opens. Instruments emerge out of time to create a watery soundscape that becomes increasingly lush as John Benitez's bass brings in the tempo, with Yusnier Sanchez Bustamante's percussion chattering behind Luisito Quintero's swirling cymbals and Leo Genovese's fluid piano. Michaan mapped the composition minimally. The flute is a suling she acquired in her travels in Indonesia, so she sketched out its scale and gave some harmonic context. ...
Continue ReadingLeo Genovese, Demian Cabaud, Marcos Cavaleiro: Estrellero
by John Ephland
Leo Genovese's piano can sound like an orchestra. It does as much amidst his voluminous solo work on bassist Demian Cabaud's “Arbol Negro," his thick chords, the density of his playing full and ripe. From their new trio recording, Estrellero, which also features the light, sympathetic stylings of Marcos Cavaleiro on drums, are five original compositions split between pianist and bassist. The contrast emerges in Genovese's own voice as he marks time with Cabaud's more plodding, abstract pen. ...
Continue ReadingDave Liebman: Dave Liebman: Live at Smalls
by Mike Jurkovic
A brief, charged commencement by Dave Liebman and trumpeter Peter Evans (Mostly Other People Do the Killing, Mary Halvorson) launches Dave Liebman: Live at Smalls and from there the nocturne reaches out like a rhizome—laterally, vertically, horizontally—thriving into your consciousness, taking root, expanding . . . Free jazz is and will always be a fertile mind-field, an active landscape where veterans such as the quintet here at Smalls, post-plague, in a city pulled apart by fact and fiction, ...
Continue Reading
