Jazz Articles about Phil Grenadier

About Phil Grenadier

Album Review

Unreal City opens as though the room itself has begun to listen. Before theme, pulse, or recognizable structure settles into place, Kevin Kastning and Phil Grenadier direct attention toward the grain of musical events: the weight of a string attack, the bloom of a brass tone, the residue left by resonance, and the silence that follows, quietly changing the next sound. The album's intensity comes less from volume or density than from the precision with which two musicians make each ...

Album Review

Bruce Gertz: Octopus Dreams

Read "Octopus Dreams" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
September 13, 2025

Veteran bassist and composer Bruce Gertz, who has more than 20 albums under his belt in a career spanning more than half a century, wrote and arranged every number on his latest recording, Octopus Dreams, wherein his skills in every realm are essential to its outcome. As a bassist, Gertz is sharp and perceptive; as a composer, quite capable within his area of preference, which basically encompasses contemporary post-bop jazz. In other words, Gertz writes well without ...

Album Review

Jerry Bergonzi: Extra Extra

Read "Extra Extra" reviewed by Alberto Bazzurro

by Alberto Bazzurro
December 27, 2024

L'italo-americano Jerry Bergonzi è notoriamente uno dei sommi sacerdoti del tenorsassofonismo contemporaneo--vogliamo definirlo post-coltraniano? nel suo caso più che mai--che sta a indicare di fatto l'ultimo mezzo secolo di musica afroamericana, in pratica ciò che è arrivato dopo lo svolgersi delle avanguardie storiche (in quanto tali, appunto, non perché dopo si siano esaurite, per buona sorte), alle quali non ha mai guardato con troppa attenzione. Il fatto che sia nato (a Boston) nel 1947 ci dice come questo ...

Album Review

Melissa Kassel & Tom Zicarelli Group: Moments

Read "Moments" reviewed by Anastasia Bogomolets

by Anastasia Bogomolets
December 21, 2024

Take a little bit of cool jazz, add boldly inventive vocals at times distinctly rooted in the realm of free jazz, gently sprinkle with bebop solos here and there, and season with heartfelt lyrics. Mix until smooth. Enjoy Moments by Melissa Kassel and the Tom Zicarelli Group. “I do not believe the studio always captures the essence of a live performance where everything is naturally spontaneous," Kassel notes. Yet, with this recording, she has undoubtedly achieved that goal. ...

Album Review

Dial and DeRosa: Keep Swingin'

Read "Keep Swingin'" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers
March 30, 2024

Keep Swingin', a splendid new album from pianist Garry Dial and drummer Rich DeRosa, features “the music of Charlie Banacos." Charlie who? you may ask. And the answer is, there are jazz educators, and then there was Charlie Banacos, whose talent and ingenuity in the classroom influenced and inspired countless jazz musicians for more than fifty years. During that time, he designed more than a hundred courses of study and wrote half a dozen books on composition and improvisation.

Album Review

Club d'Elf: You Never Know

Read "You Never Know" reviewed by Chris M. Slawecki

by Chris M. Slawecki
October 19, 2022

You Never Know is the Club d'Elf studio album that captures the whirling, overlapping orbits of acoustic, electric and exotic sounds of the floating improvisational collective, which has recorded and performed together for more than two decades, with crisp studio clarity. But more importantly, You Never Know celebrates light born from darkness. Bassist and bandleader Mike Rivard, the sole constant in the collective's 24-year run, suffered a near-death experience from a pulmonary embolism which struck him while he ...

Album Review

Club D'Elf: You Never Know

Read "You Never Know" reviewed by Chris May

by Chris May
March 7, 2022

Near-death experiences can reboot the mind, separating the important from the trivial. It seems to have worked like that for bassist and composer Mike Rivard, founder and leader of Boston's world-dub-jazz band Club D'Elf. A few years back, Rivard was nearly felled by a pulmonary embolism while seeking spiritual insight in the Amazonian rain forest. A long, dark period of depression followed, before Rivard emerged recharged into the light, having been sustained in large part by gnawa, the Moroccan trance ...