Jazz Articles about Levi Saelua

About Levi Saelua

Album Review

An initial spin of Sacramento-based drummer Alex Jenkins' Black Bird--recorded by the Alex Jenkins Trio (AJT)--brings saxophonist Sonny Rollins' A Night At The Village Vanguard (Blue Note, 1958) to mind. Rollins rolled in the trio mode for these 1957 Vanguard shows with just his saxophone, bass and drums. Going on stage in 1957 without a chording instrument--a guitar or piano--was unusual. The album was considered groundbreaking. Now the pared-down trio format is common, for good reason--dropping the necessity of chasing ...

Album Review

Alex Jenkins Trio: Tri-Cycle

Read "Tri-Cycle" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
September 17, 2021

The Alex Jenkins Trio, out of Sacramento, California, has a forthright, muscular sound. Sax, bass and drums--things boiled down to the essentials. Tri-Cycle, Jenkins' second trio recording presents music in an uncluttered style, opens the show with the cool pop and bubble of Jenkin's original, “Scarlet Lullaby." Jenkins drumming style--on a drum kit here, but, much influenced by his studies of the tabla--is busy and unsubtle on this tune in the best possible way-- no whispering brushes or ...

Album Review

Dan Jonas: The Spirituality Suite

Read "The Spirituality Suite" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
February 29, 2020

Utah-based trumpeter Dan Jonas says The Spirituality Suite was written as a response to his own struggles with spirituality in the twenty-first century. The music is thus largely conceptual, or as Jonas explains it, “Much of the inspiration . . . lies in the musical interval of a perfect fourth. The interval can be either consonant or dissonant, where the context in which it appears is the determining factor. Additionally, on one side lies a major third, one of the ...