Jazz Articles about Mike Connors

About Mike Connors

Album Review

Philippe Crettien: Healthy Trail

Read "Healthy Trail" reviewed by Sue Yang

by Sue Yang
July 11, 2026

Philippe Crettien's Healthy Trail is a chordless trio album built around implication. Written for saxophone, bass and drums, it removes piano and guitar from the ensemble and makes that open space the source of the music's tension, clarity and risk. Harmony emerges through motion: Barry Smith's bass establishing temporary ground, Crettien's saxophone placing shifting triadic colors above it, and Mike Connors' drums adjusting the pressure before any single center becomes too settled. The record asks the listener to hear harmony ...

Album Review

John Stein: Serendipity

Read "Serendipity" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
July 11, 2021

Guitarist John Stein's Massachusetts-based trio strides in with charm and confidence on Serendipity, a frame of mind that prevails throughout an album whose name was inspired by a concert-that-wasn't but eventually was, thanks to live-streaming, during a massive and deadly global pandemic. That concert, planned for an outdoor venue in New Bedford, was derailed by Covid-19 but later moved indoors to the city's Art Museum, where the trio performed for an audience of one, sound engineer John Farrell, who taped ...