Jazz Articles about Matt Ulery

About Matt Ulery

Album Review

Since his excellent recording debut under his own name, 2009's Dark Wood, Dark Water (Origin Records), trumpeter Chad McCullough has co-led a handful of forward-leaning discs with Belgian pianist Bram Weijters and one with Slovakian pianist Michal Vanoucek, in addition his work as sideman and his contributions to a few leaderless ensemble sets. Forward is just his second outing with his name on the album cover as the sole leader. His is a consistently strong catalog, but McCullough ...

Album Review

Matt Ulery: Delicate Charms

Read "Delicate Charms" reviewed by Neri Pollastri

by Neri Pollastri
October 12, 2020

Nuovo album del contrabbassista chicagoano Matt Ulery, che riunisce in quintetto alcuni suoi frequenti collaboratori per realizzare un lavoro di brillante e articolato jazz moderno. La formazione vede il leader affiancato dal pianista Rob Clearfield e dal batterista Quin Kirchner, mentre la front line è composta dal sax contralto di Greg Ward e dal violino di Zach Brock, che con Ulery ha recentemente pubblicato l'ottimo Wonderment. L'ora abbondante di musica, tutta del contrabbassista, si suddivide in sette brani ...

Album Review

Zach Brock, Matt Ulery, Jon Deitemyer: Wonderment

Read "Wonderment" reviewed by Neri Pollastri

by Neri Pollastri
September 28, 2020

Trio classico, ma con la particolarità di avere un violino come prima voce, questa formazione raccoglie tre musicisti che collaborano in varie forme da quindici anni e che operano in modo totalmente paritetico, a cominciare dalla titolarità dei dodici brani, composti quattro a testa. Dei tre il violinista Zach Brock è probabilmente il più noto, in virtù del suo esser parte (ancorché in modo non continuativo) degli acclamati Snarky Puppy, ma il contrabbassista Matt Ulery e il batterista ...

Radio & Podcasts

Matt Ulery, Fred Pallem, Sylvain Darrifourq, Tim Garland & More New Releases

by Ludovico Granvassu
September 26, 2020

For the second part of this week's exploration of new and upcoming releases, we Focus. As in... we compare and contrast the music from that iconic 'saxophone & strings' album by Stan Getz with the two more recent CDs—both entitled Re Focus—by Tim Garland and Sylvain Rifflet which Getz's 1961 masterpiece inspired. The latter was orchestrated by the great French bassist and arranger Fred Pallem who is about to release a fascinating project dedicated to fairy tales in the key ...

Album Review

Matt Ulery: Pollinator

Read "Pollinator" reviewed by Mike Jurkovic

by Mike Jurkovic
August 13, 2020

What a wonderful lift to an otherwise dismal year is Pollinator, Chicago based bassist Matt Ulery's unabashed revelry in swing jazz circa King Oliver and Jelly Roll Morton. Add a few pops, skips and other random surface noises to the sound of these eight unbridled, hothouse Ulery compositions and you'd swear you were sitting in and listening to the real thing. Because Pollinator sure sounds like your grandad's 78s. Those mysteriously heavy, black platters that set you on this beautiful ...

Album Review

Quin Kirchner: The Shadows and The Light

Read "The Shadows and The Light" reviewed by Mark Corroto

by Mark Corroto
August 1, 2020

Francis Ford Coppola's Vietnam war film, Apocalypse Now, was released in 1979. After sitting for 2 and ½ hours, a viewer might have hoped for theater management to stand at the exits to hand out pamphlets explaining what had just gone down. The conflict had ended 4 years prior, and most war movies, pre- Vietnam, were straight-forward, America-saves-the-world affairs. Goodnight. In between a surf crazed Robert Duval, Playboy Bunnies, and the insane Colonel Kurtz played by Marlon Brando, the movie ...

Album Review

Quin Kirchner: The Shadows and The Light

Read "The Shadows and The Light" reviewed by Kevin Press

by Kevin Press
July 31, 2020

Add Chicago's Quin Kirchner to the growing list of young jazz artists who've dropped impressive multi-disc releases in recent years. It has become a kind of rite of passage for a new breed of heavy hitters, these double-and triple-album sets. They are not vanity projects. Not the good ones, anyway. They come from deep pools of creativity. The kind a very few young artists have accessible to them in the early prime of their careers. Kirchner's follow-up to ...