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Jazz Articles about Michael Mayo
Ben Wendel: High Heart
by Mike Jacobs
If Ben Wendel's fifth outing as a leader High Heart shows anything, it's that the saxophonist is ever advancing. While this may seem a fait accompli for a card-carrying member of the shapeshifting collective Kneebody, Wendel's worthy solo efforts have been notably more in a traditionally-sounding vein and thus his innovations were perhaps a bit less readily evident to ears acclimated to that other side of his resume. And yes, by comparison to Kneebody, High Heart still tacks toward a ...
Continue ReadingCory Smythe: Accelerate Every Voice
by Karl Ackermann
Pianist/electronics artist/composer Cory Smythe's Pyroclastic Records debut Circulate Susanna (2018) was a tongue-in-cheek attribution to the inspiration of a fictional event. He returns to the Kris Davis run label with the intriguing, socially-conscious and genre-less Accelerate Every Voice. Inspired by an assortment of sources: Andrew Hill's Lift Every Voice (Blue Note, 1970), the work of Harlem Renaissance poet and early NAACP leader James Weldon Johnson, and the a cappella art form and its sociological duality. Smythe is an ...
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