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Jazz Articles about Luques Curtis
Cecile McLorin Salvant: Mélusine
by Katchie Cartwright
Wynton Marsalis was right, Cécile McLorin Salvant is the sort of singer who comes along only “once in a generation or two." A MacArthur Fellow, multiple Grammy winner, and self-described eclectic, Salvant creates projects that encompass an astonishing array of idioms and historical periods, which she interrelates inventively and interweaves with original compositions. Here, she plumbs the francophone side of her repertoire. French songs have cropped up regularly in her live shows, but less on disk. Mélusine fills the gap ...
Continue ReadingLisa Hilton: Paradise Cove
by Lisa Hilton
"I think we all need jazz in our lives these days. From its inception, jazz and blues were created to boost moods or morale by America's earliest composers, such as Scott Joplin, Ferdinand Jelly Roll Morton, and Nick La Rocca around the beginning of the 1900s. The music on Paradise Cove was composed and created to refresh and reboot our collective spirits and inspire all to create a personal “cove" or protected “paradise" for our well-being. Our world desires and ...
Continue ReadingLisa Hilton: Paradise Cove
by Mike Jurkovic
At a time in our collective consciousness when it appears nothing is functioning as it once did, or is as reliable as it once was, or gives us purpose and solace as we once knew, along comes the soft sustaining magic of Lisa Hilton's gorgeous new recording, Paradise Cove, and for all of its enchanting forty-five minutes all is right with the world again. Hilton may not have the wild chops of many of her peers or the ...
Continue ReadingLisa Hilton: Life is Beautiful
by Mike Jurkovic
There's an affirmation of goodness to the music of pianist Lisa Hilton, a quiet something of a positive nature that is known intrinsically true. But the world and its crowded barges of babbling talking heads are frantically convincing us all otherwise. So listen in to Life Is Beautiful before it's all too late. Without flash, pyrotechnic soloing, or virtuoso histrionics, Life is Beautiful casts an aura that envelops and holds. Intimately reworking tunes she has recorded throughout her ...
Continue ReadingBrandon Goldberg: In Good Time
by Mike Jurkovic
Pianist Brandon Goldberg may not have the seasoned years behind him yet, (In Good Time finds him brewing with ideas most fifteen-year-olds never tackle) but it is no more a beloved veteran than the late Ralph Peterson who, via a wisely archived voice mail, urges the young man “What's up Brandon, gimme a shout man we hook up later this week!" The drummer and cat supreme then wishes him “Peace" and a split second later the barnstorming, deftly pugilistic “Authority" ...
Continue ReadingLisa Hilton: Transparent Sky
by Mike Jurkovic
It is a real wonder why a genuinely and generously creative spirit such as pianist Lisa Hilton hasn't broken through to a larger audience. Her philosophy of new ideas tied to older heartbeats, countered effusively by an actively improvisational impressionism, has resulted in a discography brightly colored with real beauts such as Chalkboard Destiny (2019), Oasis (2018), Escapism (2017), Day & Night (2016) and Nocturnal, (2016) (all on her own Ruby Slippers Productions.) Now add Transparent Sky to ...
Continue ReadingJohn Hasselback III: Entrance
by Jack Bowers
Entrance, New York-based trumpeter John Hasselback III's debut recording, is basically a quintet date on which Hasselback shares the front line on four tracks each with saxophonist Wayne Escoffery or trombonist Steve Davis. If one is known by the company he keeps, that's a rather persuasive frame of reference. Hasselback wrote every number save one, the standard “Body and Soul," showing from start to finish a keen ear for enticing bop-inspired melodies and rhythms. He plays as he writes, laying ...
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