Jazz Articles about Paul Bedal

About Paul Bedal

Album Review

Euan Edmonds: Beyond Hope and Fear

Read "Beyond Hope and Fear" reviewed by Hrayr Attarian

by Hrayr Attarian
February 10, 2025

Washington DC-based Trombonist Euan Edmonds is a versatile musician who has performed in diverse settings. He honed his improvisational skills, however, in Chicago's creative music scene. His intriguing debut, Beyond Hope and Fear, on drummer Gustavo Cortinas' Desafio Candente label, features some of the city's most exciting voices in a cohesive sextet. The core of this cinematic album is the eponymous seven-part suite that features the spontaneity of the individual musicians in a dynamic framework. Saxophonist Clark Gibson ...

Album Review

Matt Ulery: Mannerist

Read "Mannerist" reviewed by Mike Jurkovic

by Mike Jurkovic
May 22, 2023

There is a lilting magic to the music of Mannerist that is hard to deny or find fault with. The “Bridge" starts and the whole day changes, eliciting, perhaps, a feeling of being lighter on the feet, lighter in spirit and, most importantly, lighter in the head. Suddenly all the information they want you to swallow goes away and its just you and the music. It is a beautiful thing. It is something bassist/composer/bandleader Matt Ulery sets out to do ...

Album Review

Amos Gillespie: Unstructured Time for Jazz Septet

Read "Unstructured Time for Jazz Septet" reviewed by Richard J Salvucci

by Richard J Salvucci
March 12, 2022

The premise of this interesting recording may well be summarized in the old Roman proverb, “Make haste, but slowly." Amos Gillespie is a Chicago-based composer and instrumentalist who has composed a nine-part jazz suite for a septet. In his own words, Unstructured Time is “about capturing childhood focus, creativity and peace through unstructured time." The title is a bit deceptive. While there may be a variety of meters that frame the improvised solos, the recording is in no way formless. ...

Album Review

Matt Ulery's Delicate Charms: Live at the Green Mill

Read "Live at the Green Mill" reviewed by Troy Dostert

by Troy Dostert
January 22, 2022

One of the central figures of Chicago's thriving jazz scene, bassist Matt Ulery has cultivated fruitful relationships with a core of compatriots who embody the grit and beauty of the music coming out of the Windy City. He maintains a host of projects, one of the foremost being Delicate Charms, a group that released its self-titled debut in 2019 on Woolgathering Records; alto saxophonist Greg Ward, pianist Rob Clearfield, drummer Quin Kirchner and violinist Zach Brock assist Ulery in creating ...

Album Review

Amos Gillespie: Unstructured Time for Jazz Septet

Read "Unstructured Time for Jazz Septet" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
December 23, 2021

Chicago-based composer/educator/alto saxophonist Amos Gillespie's CD, Unstructured Time, employs a variety of time signatures but is anything but unstructured--in fact, the opposite may reasonably be opined, as taut structure is clearly front and center on the album's four instrumental and five vocal numbers. In other words, “unstructured" in Gillespie's lexicon bears absolutely no resemblance to “free" jazz but refers instead to the struggle to find structure and balance in an environment wherein one is constantly bombarded with negative messages and ...

Album Review

Matt Ulery: Pollinator

Read "Pollinator" reviewed by Mike Jurkovic

by Mike Jurkovic
August 13, 2020

What a wonderful lift to an otherwise dismal year is Pollinator, Chicago based bassist Matt Ulery's unabashed revelry in swing jazz circa King Oliver and Jelly Roll Morton. Add a few pops, skips and other random surface noises to the sound of these eight unbridled, hothouse Ulery compositions and you'd swear you were sitting in and listening to the real thing. Because Pollinator sure sounds like your grandad's 78s. Those mysteriously heavy, black platters that set you on this beautiful ...

Album Review

El Portal: New Trophy

by AAJ Italy Staff
August 29, 2012

E' nello scenario dello “Young Jazz Festival" di Foligno che ufficialmente viene presentato il disco d'esordio di questa giovane band americana che intraprende un ambizioso viaggio alla ricerca dell'originalità. Il punto di partenza sono le dieci composizioni del sassofonista Nolan Lem ed è proprio il suo immaginario ad influenzare in modo significativo l'intero percorso musicale. La scaletta si apre con “Vortex" dove l'elemento principale è il sassofono, il suono delicato di Lem si miscela con il sottofondo dei partners in ...