Jazz Articles about Steve Hirsh

About Steve Hirsh

Album Review

Nathan Hanson / Steve Hirsh: Memory Is Subjective

Read "Memory Is Subjective" reviewed by Mark Corroto

by Mark Corroto
October 16, 2026

It goes without saying that memory is subjective. Saxophonist Nathan Hanson and drummer Steve Hirsh might tell you that, apart from the experience of attending their October 2025 live performance at the 210 Gallery & Art Center in Sandstone, Minnesota, encountering the resulting recording is an entirely different affair. They would be right. Yet Memory Is Subjective is so sincere, and so expertly recorded and mixed, that the listener is placed almost directly within the audience's sound space, experiencing something ...

Album Review

Steve Hirsh: Root Causes

Read "Root Causes" reviewed by Mark Corroto

by Mark Corroto
April 28, 2025

Although Steve Hirsh's name appears on the masthead of Root Causes, you might not immediately recognize it as a drummer-led recording. Unlike the unmistakable leadership of Art Blakey, Elvin Jones, and Tony Williams, Hirsh leads with subtlety, functioning more as a selfless, responsive collaborator than a dominant force. The album features a classic piano trio format, with pianist Eri Yamamoto and bassist William Parker rounding out the ensemble. This trio forms three-quarters of the Sparks Quartet, led by ...

Album Review

Mahakala Music: Murmuration

Read "Murmuration" reviewed by Fran Kursztejn

by Fran Kursztejn
March 28, 2025

"Birds from the east coast meet birds from the midwest," reads Mahakala Music's description for saxophonist Dave Sewelson's newest release. Sewelson himself is a bicoastal phenomenon: born in Oakland, then traipsing into the New York scene circa 1977. Like his frequent bandleader collaborator William Parker, he acts as a magnetic center to attract a variety of local and international performers alike. Murmuration's line-up consists of another fellow New Yorker-violinist Gabby Fluke-Mogul, and three Minneapolitans, bassist Anthony Cox, drummer Steve Hirsh ...

Album Review

Hirsh / Swell / Clouse / Parker: Out On A Limb

Read "Out On A Limb" reviewed by Mark Corroto

by Mark Corroto
September 13, 2024

Can déjà vu be contagious? Or at least a particular quality or disposition that is communicable? This might be the question to ask after sitting down with Out On A Limb by the improvising quartet of Steve Hirsh, Steve Swell, Jim Clouse, and William Parker. The music this unit created spontaneously in April 2024 does not appear from thin air, it is a product of a half-century of innovation and modernism in music. Much of that history has ...

Album Review

Chad Fowler: Alien Skin

Read "Alien Skin" reviewed by John Sharpe

by John Sharpe
January 8, 2023

Although the group responsible for Alien Skin might be a one-off, unlikely to meet again in this exact configuration, it contains sufficient prior connections to vouchsafe cohesion, to go with the undoubted quality. Bassist William Parker furnishes the common denominator, having previously recorded with all of the participants, even relative newcomer, reed player Zoh Amba, while pianist Matthew Shipp's releases with saxophonist Ivo Perelman are legendary and abundant. Label boss reedman Chad Fowler hooks up regularly with drummer Steve Hirsh, ...

Album Review

Chad Fowler: Alien Skin

Read "Alien Skin" reviewed by Mike Jurkovic

by Mike Jurkovic
November 20, 2022

Just from the paperwork alone, it was duly expected that Alien Skin would be unruly, raw, and cathartic. That is just the nature of the beast. That is just the way the big man planned it. But even with all that said, no one (including the players) saw Alien Skin coming down the runway. A bayou bebop rave-up of the highest order, the album's madcap namesake rips the veil, drops the mic, and makes subversive a badge of ...

Album Review

Chad Fowler: Alien Skin

Read "Alien Skin" reviewed by Mark Corroto

by Mark Corroto
November 9, 2022

Freely improvised music, saxophonist Paul Flaherty dubbed it “the hated music." Experiencing Alien Skin brings to mind another quote, this one from a shampoo commercial from the late 1980s: “Don't hate me because I'm beautiful." A beautiful alchemy is this session captured in the fall of 2021. It contains a three-horn front line of Chad Fowler, Ivo Perelman and Zoh Amba, plus pianist Matthew Shipp, bassist William Parker, and drummer Steve Hirsh. I reference alchemy because the quintet ...