Jazz Articles about Matt Penman

About Matt Penman

Liner Notes

Jonathan Kreisberg: Night Songs

by C. Andrew Hovan
August 13, 2023

Although technical proficiency and filigreed improvisations often catch the attention of the average jazz fan, those in the know will insist that you can't really evaluate the mettle of a jazz musician until you hear how he interprets a ballad. Memorable efforts from the jazz cannon that fruitfully establish a reflective mood over the length of an album must include John Coltrane's Ballads, Kenny Dorham's Quiet Kenny, and Grant Green's Idle Moments. With six dates already as a ...

Album Review

Mark Lockett: Swings & Roundabouts

Read "Swings & Roundabouts" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
April 10, 2023

The “free jazz" movement has come a long way since its introduction mid-20th century by pathfinders like Tadd Dameron, Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor, Eric Dolphy, Archie Shepp, Don Cherry, Ed Blackwell, Muhal Richard Abrams, Andrew Cyrille, Lester Bowie and their kin. The music, which favors free expression in lieu of customary chordal, rhythmic and harmonic precepts, was at times puzzling, even painful, to unscramble. Over the years, free jazz has tempered to some extent its revolutionary aspects, one example of ...

Album Review

Tobias Meinhart: The Painter

Read "The Painter" reviewed by Friedrich Kunzmann

by Friedrich Kunzmann
June 24, 2021

During the past decade of working the jazz clubs of New York, German tenor saxophonist Tobias Meinhart has soaked up every inch of the musical tradition he started pursuing as a drummer in Bavaria in his early teens. A keen ear for melodic development, a gift for harmonic oversight and the whims for rhythmic intricacy already graced the saxophonist's last outing, Berlin People (Sunnyside, 2018), featuring the distinctive playing of Kurt Rosenwinkel. On The Painter, however, Meinhart has now also ...

Album Review

Nir Felder: II

by Mike Jacobs
January 19, 2021

Six years after the release of his solo debut, Golden Age (Okeh, 2014), Nir Felder's follow-up II brings into sharper focus some of the guitarist's more compelling dichotomies as a player. His instrument of choice is the usually more crystalline-sounding Stratocaster but Felder somehow elicits a fatter-than-a-big-ol'-jazz-box tone from it. His style as a soloist has way more in common with Jim Hall than Jimi Hendrix but he more often favors flailing big ringing open-stringed or power ...

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Interview

Matt Penman: Down on James Farm

by R.J. DeLuke
May 3, 2011

Matt Penman and his bass have inhabited a variety of musical places and spaces in recent years, all of them on a very high level. That speaks to his abilities on his instrument, and his adaptability to diverse situations. He of the fluid hands, rich sound and steady, melodic pulse always comes through. That's why he's performed with Joshua Redman's Double Quartet and the SFJAZZ Collective. He's also elevated the musical projects of Joe Lovano, John Scofield, Kurt Rosenwinkel and ...

Album Review

The Embassadors feat. Michel Ongaru: Healing the Music

Read "Healing the Music" reviewed by AAJ Italy Staff

by AAJ Italy Staff
August 9, 2010

L'incontro avviene nella stanza numero 120 del WAB Hotel di Nairobi, Kenia. Circondati da zanzare ed evangelisti americani, il multi strumentista/cantante keniota Michel Ongaru e il multi strumentista neozelandese Hayden Chisolm, leader degli Embassadors, si tuffano in una full immersion di musica e parole. Chisolm scrive in inglese, Ongaru traduce in Swahili ed ecco servito Healing the Music. Dopo dodici anni di girovagare per il mondo Chisolm sente la necessità di testimoniare musicalmente l'esperienza con un proprio gruppo e quindi ...

Album Review

The Embassadors: Coptic Dub

Read "Coptic Dub" reviewed by AAJ Italy Staff

by AAJ Italy Staff
August 9, 2010

Due anni dopo l'ottimo Healing the Music, The Embassadors assemblano alcune sessions registrate a New York e in Germania nel corso del 2007, del 2008 e del 2009 e ne esce Coptic Dub, sempre per i tipi della Non Place Records, con la supervisione del mago del dub Burnt Friedman. Rispetto all'album d'esordio manca la calda voce dell'etiope Michel Ongaru “sostituito" dalle magie al mixer di Friedman e qua e là dalle chitarre di Bruno Muller e Robert Nacken. Ma ...