Jazz Articles about Rudy Royston

About Rudy Royston

Album Review

Rudresh Mahanthappa: Hero Trio

Read "Hero Trio" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
June 9, 2020

In the chordless trio tradition of tenor saxophonist Sonny Rollins on A Night At The Village Vanguard (Blue Note, 1957) and alto saxophonist Lee Konitz with his Motion (Verve, 1961), alto saxophonist Rudresh Mahanthappa offers up his Hero Trio, a saxophone, bass and drums outing nodding to his influential musical heros. Mahanthappa began his career in the shadow of Vijay Iyer, playing on the pianist's Panoptic Modes (Red Giant, 2001), Blood Sutra (Pi Recordings, 2003), and Reimagining (Savoy ...

Album Review

Alexa Tarantino: Clarity

by Paul Rauch
June 8, 2020

Saxophonist Alexa Tarantino has as impressive resume in jazz as any artist could hope for at this stage of a career. As a performer, she has contributed notably to The DIVA Jazz Orchestra, the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, the Cecile McLorin Salvant Quintet and Arturo O'Farrill & The Afro-Latin Jazz Orchestra, to note a few. She has lived the jazz life, juggling responsibilities as an educator, musician and curator, somehow fitting all the pieces together that illustrate the intricacies ...

Album Review

Alexa Tarantino: Clarity

by Dan Bilawsky
June 7, 2020

Alto saxophonist Alexa Tarantino is an indefatigable spirit, plain and simple. In the past two years alone she's worked with everybody from trumpeter Wynton Marsalis to vocalist Cecile McLorin Salvant, held down the lead alto chair in The DIVA Jazz Orchestra, co-led the fiery LSAT quintet with baritone saxophonist Lauren Sevian, directed her self-founded Rockport Jazz Workshop, and appeared on more than a half dozen albums, including three collective-minded gatherings on the Posi-Tone imprint and her own debut for the ...

Album Review

Art Hirahara: Balance Point

Read "Balance Point" reviewed by Kyle Simpler

by Kyle Simpler
May 1, 2020

There are times in life when many of us try to find a sense of stability in an uncertain world. New York-based pianist Art Hirahara refers to this as homeostasis, or “a sense of balance within ourselves regardless of what is happening around us." With Balance Point, his fifth release for Posi-Tone Records, Hirahara uses the idea of homeostasis as his central concept. He presents his own “transformative journey," inviting listeners come along for the ride. Balance Point ...

Album Review

Amina Figarova: Persistence

Read "Persistence" reviewed by Edward Blanco

by Edward Blanco
April 24, 2020

Veteran jazz pianist Amina Figarova embarks on a bold new step with her genre-bending Persistence, creating a new sound for the pianist with music that produces an electric-influenced groove mixing funk-jazz, jazz fusion, hip-hop, classical and R&B rhythms found on this new exploratory album. After two decades leading an acoustic sextet, her new quintet ensemble, Edition 113 (named after the block where she and her and husband, flautist Bart Platteau make their home) was assembled specifically to perform the eclectic ...

Album Review

Michelle Lordi: Break Up With the Sound

Read "Break Up With the Sound" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey

by C. Michael Bailey
January 22, 2020

Vocalist Michelle Lordi's house burned down at the end of 2017. That is a bracing life event from which one may find oneself at a brutally curious fork in the road. Lordi's Break Up With the Sound makes it seem that she blazed through Kubler Ross's five stages of loss and got to work on something so new, it smelled of white-hot creation. Lordi's modus operandi has been addressing the Great American Songbook, as evidenced by her densely competent Dream ...

Album Review

Noah Preminger Group: Zigsaw: Music Of Steve Lampert

Read "Zigsaw: Music Of Steve Lampert" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
September 25, 2019

With Zigsaw: The Music of Steve Lampert, saxophonist Noah Preminger presents his most ambitious album to date. Trumpeter-composer Lampert writes cerebral, avant-garde compositions. Preminger, rather than diving into a collection of Lampert tunes, takes on a single forty-nine minute magnum opus piece that zigzags back and forth between structure and openness, with an all-star septet that creates a sometimes brash, sometimes dreamy and rambling sound. Describing this sound: a sonic jigsaw stew comprised of Miles Davis' Bitches Brew ...