Jazz Articles about Nels Cline

About Nels Cline

Album Review

The Nels Cline Singers: Share The Wealth

Read "Share The Wealth" reviewed by Mark Sullivan

by Mark Sullivan
December 3, 2020

Guitarist Nels Cline has led the Nels Cline Singers since 2002. While they have sometimes had guest performers on their recordings, the core band has been a trio of Cline, drummer Scott Amendola and bassist Trevor Dunn (originally Devin Hoff). This album expands the group to a sextet with the addition of saxophonist Skerik, keyboardist Brian Marsella and percussionist Cyro Baptista. The experimental ante was further upped by the fact that they had never before played together in this combination, ...

Radio & Podcasts

Something Blue

by Patrick Burnette
November 17, 2020

For the last of our four-episode examination of discs we missed from various best of 2010's lists (and that's almost, but not quite, rapping, isn't it?) it's all about “something blue." Or, in this case, something Blue Note. One entry on Avant sneaks in on the basis of its title, so at least it's not a Blue-opoly. In pop matters, Mike takes a minute to slag off Laura Marling and Elliot Smith while Pat wonders if a much more talented ...

Album Review

The Nels Cline Singers: Share The Wealth

Read "Share The Wealth" reviewed by Mike Jurkovic

by Mike Jurkovic
November 11, 2020

A work of pummeling beauty, exhaustion and exhilaration await at the end of genre rogue guitarist Nels Cline's upheaval Share the Wealth, eighty minutes of magical, maniacal, free jam composition that, in perhaps a few more years down the line--if the line makes it past Election Day--we'll argue stands right up there with such and such album of equal fire and fury. Time, to which we've become too nervously accustomed, is tense, and everyone's cranked to ten or ...

Album Review

Bobby Previte, Jamie Saft and Nels Cline: Music from the Early 21st Century

Read "Music from the Early 21st Century" reviewed by Chris M. Slawecki

by Chris M. Slawecki
May 24, 2020

Music from the Early 21st Century presents music captured during a brief trio tour by keyboardist Jamie Saft, guitarist Nels Cline and drummer Bobby Previte, performing completely improvised music. “Fundamentally, it's based around the classic organ trio formation--drums, Hammond organ and guitar," Saft explains. “But it just blows up the language to so many different universes." “Captured during a brief trio tour" doesn't do justice to this wild, ravenous sound. Trapped and caged like a snarling animal seems ...

Radio & Podcasts

A Jazz Immuno-Booster: Part 1

by Ludovico Granvassu
March 23, 2020

We may still be months away from developing vaccines to tame the threat that COVID19 poses to our bodies. But given the centrality of the mind-body connection for our physical well being, we should not forget that we continue to have music to support our minds during these challenging times. So I have reached out to the very people that have been providing us with this life-line, musicians, and have asked them to share one song they rely ...

Album Review

Satoko Fujii Orchestra New York: Entity

Read "Entity" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
February 4, 2020

Pianist / composer Satoko Fujii has staked out her ground as one of the most original voices in jazz—or in any artform, for that matter. She has released more than eighty albums, beginning with her 1995 debut, Something About Water (Libra Records), a piano duet set with Paul Bley. She tours relentlessly. She records in every ensemble format imaginable: solos, duos, trios, quartets and big bands. Lots of big bands, based in Berlin, Tokyo, Kobe, Nagoya, New York.

Album Review

Satoko Fujii Orchestra New York: Entity

Read "Entity" reviewed by Karl Ackermann

by Karl Ackermann
January 26, 2020

As she did in 2019, pianist/composer Satoko Fujii—an artist at home in many formations—opens the new decade with an orchestra recording. Entity, from Fujii's Orchestra New York, is the eleventh release from the ensemble that has remained largely intact for almost twenty-three years. It is an all-star collective that includes saxophonists Oscar Noriega, Ellery Eskelin and Tony Malaby, trumpeters Natsuki Tamura and Herb Robertson, guitarist Nels Cline and drummer Ches Smith. Entity has its moments of tranquility but ...