Jazz Articles about Tony Scherr

About Tony Scherr

Album Review

Luca Benedetti: Slow Down For Turtles

Read "Slow Down For Turtles" reviewed by Doug Collette

by Doug Collette
September 17, 2026

Guitarist/composer Luca Benedetti is emerging from the same hallowed Brooklyn community that has nurtured the alchemy of Medeski Martin & Wood as well as the chameleonic likes of his fretboard peer Will Bernard. The winsomely titled Slow Down For Turtles, Benedetti's third album with bassist Tony Scherr and drummer Tony Mason, is an object lesson in the concept of “less is more;" its music in deceptively stark contrast to its intricate cover images, photographs by Benedetti's father of ...

Album Review

Alicia Hall Moran: Coldblooded

Read "Coldblooded" reviewed by Tyran Grillo

by Tyran Grillo
March 16, 2026

Take a heart and cast it into water. Lower the temperature. Watch the surface tighten until motion turns into sculpture. What remains are rings expanding outward, movements frozen into memories. These are the contours listeners encounter on Coldblooded, the third meta-statement from singer and composer Alicia Hall Moran. Sound travels across its surface as a skate blade tests structural integrity. History breathes beneath that ice, even as traumas wait behind winter's glaze. And so, the music begins its slow migration ...

Album Review

Chris Cheek: Keepers of the Eastern Door

Read "Keepers of the Eastern Door" reviewed by David Weiner

by David Weiner
May 9, 2025

In Keepers of the Eastern Door, saxophonist Chris Cheek leads a beautifully played, richly melodic and creatively curated set of performances, which split the difference between enchantment and fun. Cheek and his bandmates--Bill Frisell on guitar, Tony Scherr on bass, and Rudy Royston on drums--offer a mix of distinctive Cheek originals and unexpected takes on works by others. The covers are borrowed from genres outside the jazz and songbook repertoires, and the band outfits them with attractive new arrangements, tempos ...

Album Review

Kenny Wollesen: LATRALA

Read "LATRALA" reviewed by Glenn Astarita

by Glenn Astarita
August 29, 2024

When a February 2022 gig at John Zorn's experimental showcase The Stone was unexpectedly canceled due to Covid protocol, Wollesen seized the lemon juicer and booked the band into Shahzad Ismaily's famed Figure 8 studio in Brooklyn for the following two days. The session was engineered by Lily Wen and produced by Will Shore, a composer who plays vibes alongside Wollesen in the utopian art-jazz group Užupis. Playing together for the first time, LATRALA recorded nearly the entire album and ...

Album Review

Elan Mehler: There Is A Dance

Read "There Is A Dance" reviewed by Patrick Burnette

by Patrick Burnette
September 17, 2022

David Bowie's album The Rise And Fall of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars (RCA, 1972) includes instructions on the back: “To Be Played At Maximum Volume." Had pianist Elan Mehler's new trio effort, There is a Dance, followed suit, the slogan would be something like “To Be Played Only on Rainy Afternoons." There is a Dance, which celebrates memories of Mehler's mother, is a quiet, meditative album, one more drawn to rubato than momentum. There are moments of ...

Album Review

Norah Jones: I Dream of Christmas

Read "I Dream of Christmas" reviewed by Jim Trageser

by Jim Trageser
October 23, 2021

With Tony Bennett's retirement, the mantle of legitimate straight-ahead pop crooners is now firmly in the hands of subsequent generations: Harry Connick, Jr., Diana Krall and Norah Jones. Not pure jazz singers, of which there are numerous stellar examples, these singers are more in the Bennett-Sinatra-Fitzgerald mold, bringing a jazz sensibility to pop music. It is in the area of seasonal Christmas music that the crooners have had perhaps their greatest influence. From Andy Williams to Connie Stevens, ...

Album Review

Pat Donaher: Occasionally

Read "Occasionally" reviewed by Jerome Wilson

by Jerome Wilson
July 4, 2021

Occasionally sees saxophonist Pat Donaher reflecting on a few milestones in his life to date. He does this by writing and performing compositions which are all dedicated to occasions and people that have been special to him. Donaher's varied set of tunes is played here by an excellent group with Jason Palmer on trumpet, Tim Watson on guitar, Carmen Staaf on piano, Tony Scherr on bass and Allison Miller on drums. Two selections celebrate family weddings. “Wedding Day," ...