Jazz Articles about Michael Emmert

About Michael Emmert

Album Review

Sanifu Hall & Cosmos Dwellerz Arkestra: These Are The Times

Read "These Are The Times" reviewed by Andy Crowther

by Andy Crowther
July 21, 2026

Without paying attention to sleeve notes, you could be a fan of the Black Jazz record label and their run of funky yet deep releases of the 1970s, and miss the fact that trombonist Sanifu Al Hall Jr. both played and wrote on albums from Doug Carn, Henry Franklin, and Chester Thompson. If you like golden age hip-hop, and the classic “Luck Of Lucien" by A Tribe Called Quest, you might know it sampled “Forty Days" from Billy Brooks Windows ...

Album Review

Madre Vaca: Knights of the Round Table

Read "Knights of the Round Table" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
October 26, 2023

The legend of King Arthur and Camelot is depicted musically on Knights of the Round Table, the sixth album by the Florida-based eleven-member ensemble, Madre Vaca, whose themes are composed by drummer Benjamin Shorstein. While Knights is presented as a ten-part suite, there seems to be no connecting tissue aside from the names of individual works --"Arthur," “Camelot," “Galahad," “Merlin," “Guinevere" and “Lancelot" among them. True, there seems to be an over-all medieval vibe underlining Shorstein's music, ...