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Diego Pinera: Odd Wisdom
by Phillip Woolever
In certain musical occasions the essence of time is more vividly pronounced than others. That equation is often pronounced clearly in the technique of how a drummer applies various rhythms, and the resulting effect those metrics have on a song or project. Drummer Diego Pinera is a widely travelled percussionist from Uruguay, currently based in Berlin. His second release on the German-based ACT label demonstrates a vast range of compositional skills recorded during one brief, extremely productive session ...
Continue ReadingFranco Ambrosetti: Lost Within You
by Doug Collette
The Franco Ambrosetti Band Band's Lost Within You is a supremely unassuming listening experience. An all-star band helps the trumpeter composer conjure a sensuous mood that only grows progressively engrossing over the course of the seventy-plus minutes playing time of the album. The seductive sensation is an inexorable process that commences with the very first cut. The second-longest track on the record next to “Body and Soul," Horace Silver's “Peace" features drummer Jack DeJohnette at the piano and ...
Continue ReadingFranco Ambrosetti Band: Lost Within You
by Dan McClenaghan
Swiss trumpeter / flugelhorninst Franco Ambrosetti opens his Lost Within You with “Peace," from the pen of pianist Horace Silver. The original rendition comes from Silver's Blowin' The Blues Away (Blue Note, 1959). It was a composition that Silver stumbled upon when he was “doodling around on the piano, and it just came to me." It featured Blue Mitchell's characteristically brassy trumpet tone. It was unusual in the Silver songbook—an introspective, patiently deployed ballad, instead of the normal hard-charging, romps ...
Continue ReadingJoachim Mencel: Brooklyn Eye
by Dan Bilawsky
Growing up under the weight of communism in Poland in the late '60s and early '70s, Joachim Mencel dreamed of the freedoms and wonders of America. Stateside relatives sent food parcels, offering him his first tastes of Hershey's chocolate and the inviting aromas of Maxwell House coffee; and Polish public radio station Trójka filled his ears with jazz, gifting the sounds of Miles Davis, among other greats. By the time Mencel first travelled to America, to take part in the ...
Continue ReadingWolfgang Muthspiel: Angular Blues
by Mike Jurkovic
So much of Austrian guitarist Wolfgang Muthspiel's music materializes before you like Mr. Spock and company on Star Trek. The music beamed in always airy and on the verge of evaporation. But before it does either manifest or vanish it leads you along a slippery slope, through brave structures where only the guitarist knows where the footings are hidden. Long time collaborator drummer Brian Blade knows the above characteristics well. So he becomes the center of gravity around ...
Continue ReadingKandace Springs: The Women Who Raised Me
by Peter J. Hoetjes
Cover albums tend to sort themselves pretty neatly into two separate bins. One is filled with tiresome stacks of uninspired music soon to be filed away and forgotten. The other, smaller pile is made up of those few in which the artist on the cover managed to do something more than parrot their predecessors. Those who wish to belong to the latter group find a way to add a personal touch to their songs, in such a way that each ...
Continue ReadingWolfgang Muthspiel: Angular Blues
by Mark Sullivan
Austrian jazz guitarist Wolfgang Muthspiel's previous two ECM albums have been quintets: Where The River Goes (ECM, 2018) and Rising Grace (ECM, 2016). This trio date is a call back to his ECM leader debut, Driftwood (ECM, 2014), with Brian Blade returning on drums but Scott Colley replacing Larry Grenadier on double bass. The music is mostly Muthspiel originals, but this time the program also includes two standards. Muthspiel opens the set on classical guitar, which he stays ...
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