Jazz Articles about Max Ridley

About Max Ridley

Album Review

Ivanna Cuesta Gonzalez: A Letter To The Earth

Read "A Letter To The Earth" reviewed by Mike Jurkovic

by Mike Jurkovic
June 26, 2024

From the onset of its spiraling, corkscrew self, A Letter to the Earth finds two ever-emerging forces--pianist Kris Davis and drummer Ivanna Cuesta Gonzalez--locked into the mindset that home base (Earth) is screwed-up and (we) had better do something about it! Like yesterday. Gonzalez, hailing from the climate-buffeted Dominican Republic, knows firsthand of what she speaks. Revealing a hyper sense of self and her surroundings, she intuits the chaos and combat ahead. The pretty pictures of ...

Album Review

Mina Cho: Beat Mirage

Read "Beat Mirage" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
March 9, 2024

Korean-born, Boston-based pianist Mina Cho's Beat Mirage represents a marriage between western contemporary jazz and traditional Korean rhythms and percussive modulations. The question that arises is this: on what basis should such a hybrid be evaluated? While it isn't strictly jazz, neither is it entirely Korean and thus devoid of such jazz components as interplay and improvisation. The album's title, Cho writes, “encapsulates a broad spectrum of how beats are perceived." The concept of “grace beat," Cho ...