Jazz Articles about Rachel Z

Rachel Z: Sensual

by Mike Jurkovic
March 28, 2024

Whatever her impetus--be it the loss of her parents or peans to a shared sense of hearth, home and heaven--pianist/composer Rachel Z's thirteenth full length album, Sensual, bares a sincere, hopeful humanity. Buoyed by a sense of survival, Sensual opens as if it were a letter, closing with the Foo Fighters' crotch-kick raise-the-roof-'n-rile-'em-up “These Days." Sensual pulls one in fast and fully with the keenly seductive opener, “Save My Soul." It dances. It stirs. Z, whose ...

Dept of Good and Evil feat. Rachel Z: Dept of Good and Evil

by John Kelman
March 20, 2007

Pianist Rachel Z revisits her successful deconstruction of (largely) contemporary tunes on Everlasting (Tone Center, 2004) with Dept of Good and Evil. This time, however, the trio's more collaborative nature has compelled Z to release the music under a collective group name, Dept of Good and Evil.

There's a stronger balance struck between contemporary material, original material written by Z (alone or in collaboration with drummer/producer Bobbie Rae) and material from the repertoires of saxophonists Wayne Shorter and Joe Henderson. ...

Rachel Z: Grace

by Stephen Latessa
October 8, 2005

This should have been easy to avoid. During the recording or planning sessions for Grace, Rachel Z's first vocal album, someone should have had the courage to tell her that she just doesn't sing very well. She has tried many different things over the years, to varying degrees of success, so perhaps she figured that singing would be a nice change of pace. Unfortunately her vocals are a fatal flaw from which the album cannot recover.

It is ...

Rachel Z: Everlasting

by Javier AQ Ortiz
October 22, 2004

If one has little sympathy for the jazzification of popular music, low tolerance for jazzified swinging musicality for its own sake, outright disgust for anything other than scorching tempos or abstraction for its own sake, derision for space and breaths of cooled musical air between the polarities of accessible depth and potent fragility, then one should stay clear from Rachel Z. One has to wonder, however, if Z's craft would get more attention than it does among some of the ...

Rachel Z: Everlasting

by John Kelman
May 22, 2004

Deconstructing popular contemporary songs seems to be the current flavour of the month. From the Bad Plus' rock-heavy interpretations of the Pixies to Brad Mehldau's inventive look at Radiohead, artists are realizing that not only is there a wealth of modern material out there to replace the Great American Songbook, but the approach has resulted in drawing a younger audience. Listeners who are less-than-likely to warm to yet another version of “If I Were a Bell" are happier to hear ...

Rachel Z Shocks the Bunny

by Mike Brannon
February 25, 2003

Ok, quick...name all the artists you can think of with a last name starting with Z. Moon, Dweezil, Ahmet...but they're all in the Zappa family, right? Ok, Zamfir, if you've really gotta go there. Well, now there's another worthy of that elusive 26th letter... pianist/keyboardist Rachel Niccolazzo or Rachel Z, for short.

Numbered among her many accomplishments, the Grammy award-winning artist has recorded and toured with Wayne Shorter, Steps Ahead and is now a fixture on Peter Gabriel's “Growing Up ...

Rachel Z Trio: Moon at the Window

by Todd S. Jenkins
November 18, 2002

Rachel Z's tribute to Joni Mitchell has perhaps arrived at just the right time, hot on the heels of Mitchell's decision to never record again. No doubt her die-hard fans will be clamoring for as much original and tribute material as possible, and a good many will find joy in this comfortable instrumental release.

It's impossible not to like the buoyant, loving arrangements that Rachel Z has collected here. However, for as many popular tunes as Joni Mitchell has created ...