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Steph Richards, Dwight Trible, Roberto Ottaviano, Craig Taborn & More New Releases

by Ludovico Granvassu
This week our playlist is bursting at the seams with great projects, several of which explore the renewed interest in what many like to call 'spiritual jazz,' from Roberto Ottaviano to Dwight Trible's Cosmic Vibrations and Matthew Halsall out of the increasingly interesting Manchester jazz scene. The rest of the playlist alternates forward looking projects like the welcome return of Craig Taborn's Junk Magic, Supersense the multisensory project by Steph Richards with Jason Moran, or Torbjörn Zetterberg's Den Stora Frågan, ...
Continue ReadingSteph Richards: Supersense

by Mike Jurkovic
With all the threatening weirdness and desperate surrealism that has become life in the USA, it makes absolute sense that Supersense, daring trumpeter/composer Steph Richards' third full length album, starts out like an encroaching invasion of ants, or microbes, or a disruptive, divisive, myopic political movement. As with such forward seeking rebels as Henry Threadgill, Anthony Braxton, David Byrne, Laurie Anderson and Yoko Ono, Richards' modus operandi is chiseled in the very foundations of the music itself. Never ...
Continue ReadingJames Carney: Pure Heart

by Peter J. Hoetjes
When a large ensemble like the one heard on Pure Heart contains such dynamic personalities as Ravi Coltrane, Oscar Noreiga and Dezron Douglas, it's a sure bet that a bandleader is going to have their hands full directing them through his compositions. However, with just five songs to the album, pianist James Carney is able to allow these musicians room to maneuver. What's more, he does so without falling prey to the corrosive lethargy of routine formula. Coltrane ...
Continue ReadingStephanie Richards: Take the Neon Lights

by Vincenzo Roggero
Sono due gli elementi principali che emergono all'ascolto di Take the Neon Lights : la straordinaria tecnica strumentale di Steph Richards, nella scia di innovatori come Nate Wooley e Peter Evans, ed una scrittura decisamente originale, anomala, anticonvenzionale. Al secondo album da leader, dopo l'eccellente debutto con l'elettronico Fullmoon, Richards scopre definitivamente le carte mettendo in luce una visione musicale che fa tesoro di frequentazioni che vanno da Henry Threadgill a St. Vincent, da John Zorn a Laurie Anderson, da ...
Continue ReadingStephanie Richards: Creative Music

by Kevin Press
Calgary's Stephanie Richards has been rubbing shoulders with some of the world's finest jazz players since putting down roots in New York City. The trumpeter has a passion for testing boundaries and an intuitive approach to her work. Her latest, Take the Neon Lights, is a tribute to her new home. All About Jazz: Collaborations have played a big part in your career to date. Is that by design? Steph Richards: It's inherent in the music ...
Continue ReadingStephanie Richards: Take The Neon Lights

by Mike Jurkovic
Trumpeter/composer Steph Richards kicks ass and she wants you to know it from the very first cutting, fluttering evocations of Take The Neon Lights' title tune/opener to the near Taps"-like silence that closes things out, All the Years of Our Lives." With a colorful CV of playing alongside such boundary-busting, risk-taking players as David Byrne, John Zorn, Anthony Braxton, Henry Threadgill, Laurie Anderson, Jason Moran, and Yoko Ono, Richards comes by her thrilling avant-garde inclinations as a matter ...
Continue ReadingSteph Richards, Kuba Plużek and More

by Maurice Hogue
The much-acclaimed Australian saxophonist Sandy Evans' passion for combining jazz improvisation and Indian music continues unabated on her latest recording Bridge of Dreams. She brought together some top musicians from India, including the incredible vocalist Shubha Mudgal, Sandy's frequent accompanist tabla player Bobby Singh and the Sirens Big Band from Sydney for the project. Recently, the project was premiered live on stage at the Sydney Festival. Also in this episode, trumpeter Steph Richards steps in front of a quartet for ...
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