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Mike Clark & Michael Zilber: Mike Drop
by Paul Rauch
A first encounter with saxophonist Michael Zilber in a live setting leaves a very large impression. Enshrouding the marvelous facility and deeply melodic approach to improvisation is “the sound" which allows the listener to receive the music in a soulful way. When that sound and imagination are driven by the post-bop mastery of drummer Mike Clark, illuminating things can and will take place.Celebrating a ten-year friendship, Zilber and Clark laid down this session in Oakland in 2018 for ...
Continue ReadingMichael Wolff: Live at Vitellos
by Dan Bilawsky
As time stretches the fabric of reality, what with venues closed or operating under incredibly restrictive mandates since March of 2020, it's starting to feel like it's been a decade since we've been able to gather in the quiets of a club to take in a rapturous set of music. So it's only fitting that this ten-year-old gem should drop into the world at this juncture, giving pause to bemoan what's been lost and appreciate a music found.
Continue ReadingLeon Lee Dorsey: Thank You Mr. Mabern!
by Mike Jurkovic
He's studied classical double bass with Ron Carter and he's played alongside many of our most revered, among them Lionel Hampton, Art Blakey, andCassandra Wilson. Still, bassist/composer/arrangerLeon Lee Dorsey's name doesn't roll off everyone lips when discussing the top ranks of today's foremost, fearless bassists. But here's breaking news: Dorsey's got himself one hell of a rakin' and scrapin' new album spotlighting, God bless his good heart, the late Harold Mabern, sitting in two months before his passing in September ...
Continue ReadingMike Clark: Indigo Blue Live at the Iridium
by Phillip Woolever
Mike Clark has basically spent the entire seven decades of his life keeping the beat, including over fifty years of drumming with the best musicians in the business. Thus it should be no surprise that this project features a quintet that measures up to damn near anybody. Many aficionados share the opinion that live jazz is the art form's ultimate format. This assembly of awesome action makes that position hard to dispute, with a powerful performance package in ...
Continue ReadingTony Adamo: Was Out Jazz Zone Mad
by Nicholas F. Mondello
The translation of “Adam" from Hebrew--from which the surname Adamo springs--means from the “ground" or “soil." It also derives from the Hebrew word for red, a la “red clay." Perhaps that is why any work from Tony Adamo is rare earth--gritty, and flaming crimson. Was Out Jazz Zone Mad Adamo's latest, his first for Ropeadope, is all of those things and more.Adamo is the Heavyweight Champion of “hipspokenword," wherein lingo meets vocalizing at the corner of jazz and ...
Continue ReadingTony Adamo: Was Out Jazz Zone Mad
by Chris M. Slawecki
Some African cultures preserved their history not by the written but by the spoken word, kept by oral cultural historians known as griots. On Was Out Jazz Zone Mad, vocalist Tony Adamo aspires to serve in this same role, as a verbal historian of both official and unofficial African-American jazz and blues culture. This type of jazz jive might wear quickly thin but Adamo writes about jazz and jazz musicians with such detailed intimacy and vision that his words snap, ...
Continue ReadingMike Clark: East Bay Funk
by George Colligan
[ Editor's Note: The following interview is reprinted from George Colligan's blog, Jazztruth]I remember the first time I heard the classic Herbie Hancock album Thrust (Columbia, 1974). It was on the radio, if you can believe it. The song “Actual Proof" burned into my brain: I had been a fan of Herbie's, especially of the Headhunters, of songs like “Chameleon" and “Watermelon Man," but this was different. It was so electrifying, so ultra-sophisticated, so mesmerizing. It was a ...
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