Jazz Articles about Matthew Halpin

About Matthew Halpin

Album Review

Roamer is vocalist Lauren Kinsella, drummer Matthew Jacobson, bassist/guitarist Simon Jermyn and saxophonist/flautist Matthew Halpin—four of Ireland's most lauded creative musicians. Formed in 2016, the quartet's activities have been frustratingly intermittent in the interim, though it is hardly surprising given that its members are based in London, Cologne, Berlin and Dublin. One early highlight came in 2017, when Roamer collaborated with Irish poet Cherry Smyth in an Arts Council-funded project at Bray Jazz Festival. That project has evolved to the ...

Album Review

Florian Ross: Tunes & Explorations

Read "Tunes & Explorations" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
October 17, 2022

Variety and nostalgia are the essence of Tunes & Explorations, the twenty-second album by German-born composer/arranger Florian Ross who observes his fiftieth anniversary by dipping into the Great American Songbook to revive and reshape for his splendid octet a number of luminous evergreens from the Golden Age of American music. Ross underlines the contrast via jazz compositions from Bill Evans ("Fun Ride") and Horace Silver (the closing “Sister Sadie") and his own groovy curtain-raiser, “Baking Magels." The ...

Album Review

Florian Ross Octet: Tunes & Explorations

Read "Tunes & Explorations" reviewed by Pierre Giroux

by Pierre Giroux
October 14, 2022

Florian Ross is a German-born composer, arranger and jazz pianist who has a fondness for releasing albums with double names which began with his debut release Seasons & Places (Naxos Records, 1998). He has continued with that “idée fixe" in almost every year in which he has delivered a release. This year is no exception; the latest incarnation is Tunes & Explorations, an octet session given over (with one exception) to the exploration of some well-known compositions from the Great ...

Album Review

Matthew Halpin: Agreements

Read "Agreements" reviewed by Ian Patterson

by Ian Patterson
July 11, 2021

Irish tenor saxophonist Matthew Halpin has waited for his moment to strike with his debut CD as leader, having graduated from Berklee College of Music as long ago as 2013. Not that he has been coasting; since relocating to Germany, Halpin has recorded with The Owl Ones and Last Chance Dance, just two of half-a-dozen ongoing projects at the cutting edge of contemporary music. On Agreements Halpin surrounds himself with some of his closest collaborators from his various groups, to ...