Jazz Articles about Sandy Ewen

About Sandy Ewen

Album Review

Stefan Keune / Sandy Ewen / Damon Smith: Two Felt-Tip Pens: Live At Moers

Read "Two Felt-Tip Pens: Live At Moers" reviewed by Mark Corroto

by Mark Corroto
July 29, 2025

This recording from the Moers Festival in May 2023, Germany, is dedicated to the late Hans Schneider. Bassist and label curator Damon Smith has made it a lifelong practice to seek out and collaborate with his musical heroes, a list that includes Jaap Blonk, Roscoe Mitchell, Henry Kaiser and Vinny Golia. Naturally, that list also honors pioneering bassists like Joëlle Léandre, Peter Kowald, Bertram Turetzky--and Schneider, who passed away in 2024. Joining Smith for this performance are American ...

Album Review

Roscoe Mitchell: One Head Four People

Read "One Head Four People" reviewed by Fran Kursztejn

by Fran Kursztejn
February 7, 2025

"I'm always trying to take what's there and, in the end, make it sound like nothing's missing from it," Roscoe Mitchell relates in a 2016 interview, in relation to his string of European solo concerts, yet the statement is just as relevant to the jazz giant's newest studio release, One Head Four People, as any other. The recording comes just as Mitchell's 2014 performance (released on ugEXPLODE, 2021) A Railroad Spike Forms the Voice celebrates its ten year anniversary, and ...

Album Review

Stephen Gauci, Sandy Ewen: Studio Sessions Vol. 6

Read "Studio Sessions Vol. 6" reviewed by Alberto Bazzurro

by Alberto Bazzurro
March 31, 2022

Una lunga scorribanda tenoristica, piena zeppa di ruvidezze e intemperanze varie, il tutto attraverso otto episodi e quaranta minuti abbondanti di musica: ecco cosa ci offre, con episodiche pause-oasi più riflessive, questo sesto volume della saga delle Studio Sessions di Stephen Gauci, qui in compagnia della giovane chitarrista Sandy Ewen, il cui apporto, non fosse altro che proprio sul piano della presenza sonora, appare fin troppo mortificato dallo strapotere del suo compagno di cordata (e comunque dedicato a un rumorismo ...

Album Review

Gauci Ewen Lane Shea: Studio Sessions Vol.5

Read "Studio Sessions Vol.5" reviewed by Alberto Bazzurro

by Alberto Bazzurro
March 18, 2022

Inciso tre mesi prima (novembre 2018) del Vol. 4, di cui ci siamo occupati di recente, questo nuovo capitolo della saga free impro capitanata (anche nel ruolo di produttore) da Stephen Gauci, sax tenore, in quartetto con partners tutti diversi, evidenzia una maggiore capacità di gestire gli spazi improvvisativi (quindi l'aleatorietà, che qui segue itinerari più felicemente calibrati e articolati sul piano delle dinamiche), generando conseguentemente una musica più introitabile da parte di chi ascolta, che ne può cogliere e ...

Album Review

Stephen Gauci / Sandy Ewen: Studio Sessions Vol. 6

Read "Studio Sessions Vol. 6" reviewed by John Sharpe

by John Sharpe
June 3, 2020

One of reasons label boss and tenor saxophonist Stephen Gauci appreciates performing with Texan guitarist Sandy Ewen so much is that she doesn't play anything which demands a rote response. Ewen forms one quarter of Gauci's regular quartet, which appears on Live At The Bushwick Series (Gaucimusic, 2019) and Studio Sessions Volume 5 (Gaucimusic, 2020), but on Studio Sessions Volume 6, she claims equal billing with the reedman on a program of eight seat-of-the-pants journeys into the unknown.