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Steve Davis: Systems Blue
by C. Andrew Hovan
From Kid Ory to Roswell Rudd, the role of the trombone has changed dramatically over the brief span of jazz history, as we know it. Whether it be keeping a beat via the style of “tailgating," exploring a multitude of textural possibilities through the challenges of the avant-garde, or working somewhere in that middle ground that we call mainstream jazz, the instrument has remained a highly expressive vehicle for communication within the idiom. It's somewhat surprising then that a fairly ...
Continue ReadingAdam Shulman Septet: West Meets East
by C. Andrew Hovan
Quiet as it's kept, too many of today's finest jazz artists are given short shrift by an industry that seems to value product of a fleeting nature over true craft and a reverence for the jazz legacy. This makes it particularly challenging for a talent like Adam Shulman to break through to a wider audience. A fixture on the Bay Area scene since 2002, the pianist has a knack for accompanying singers such as Paula West and often performs as ...
Continue ReadingHarold Mabern: Mabern Plays Coltrane
by Mike Jurkovic
As is too often the case, we gain more and more respect and insight into an artist after he or she has passed away. Harold Mabern may have been overshadowed by many of his peers but he remained true to himself: bringing to the music a Memphis-bred hard bop blues and flourishing as both sought after sideman and impish, emphatic leader. Mabern never let you forget that, by all accounts, he was a generous, joyous man who reveled ...
Continue ReadingMike LeDonne: It's All Your Fault
by Jack Bowers
Even though listed on only four tracks, organist Mike LeDonne's superlative Groover Quartet performs on every one of the nine selections on LeDonne's admirable new recording, It's All Your Fault--and that's a good thing, as each member of the quartet (LeDonne, tenor saxophonist Eric Alexander, guitarist Peter Bernstein, drummer Joe Farnsworth) is an accomplished soloist and ardent team player. On the album's remaining tracks, the quartet is assimilated into LeDonne's seventeen- member big band, a taut and high-powered unit that ...
Continue ReadingJohn Hasselback III: Entrance
by Jack Bowers
Entrance, New York-based trumpeter John Hasselback III's debut recording, is basically a quintet date on which Hasselback shares the front line on four tracks each with saxophonist Wayne Escoffery or trombonist Steve Davis. If one is known by the company he keeps, that's a rather persuasive frame of reference. Hasselback wrote every number save one, the standard “Body and Soul," showing from start to finish a keen ear for enticing bop-inspired melodies and rhythms. He plays as he writes, laying ...
Continue ReadingSteve Davis, Paul Desmond & Walt Weiskopf
by Joe Dimino
We begin the 684th Episode of Neon Jazz with veteran jazz trombonist Steve Davis and follow that up with a song by his mentor Jackie McLean. Quite a bit of music came out during 2020 and that trend continues into 2021. We look back at music released by Walt Weiskopf, Joshua Redman and Andrea Brachfeld in 2020. Then we look into the current wave of new music this year with Cory Weeds and Mike Casey. We also say good-bye to ...
Continue ReadingAdam Shulman Septet: West Meets East
by Jack Bowers
The “west" here is represented by San Francisco-based pianist and group leader Adam Shulman, the “east" by the other half-dozen members of Shulman's impressive septet. Even though the reasons that led to the alliance are ambiguous, what matters is the payoff, and that is more than admirable from any vantage point. As if to mirror the ensemble's six-and-one makeup, Shulman wrote six of the album's seven engaging numbers; the seventh (the rapid-fire “Whose Blues") was composed by ...
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