Jazz Articles about Wolfgang Muthspiel

Mike Holober: Wish List

by David Miller
November 1, 2006

The great thing about jazz is that you may think you know a lot about a lot, but in reality you don't know jack. It seems every time I pop in a new record, I learn about a new artist I've never heard before. In listening to Mike Holober's Wish List, I was lucky enough to learn about three: Holober, Tim Ries, and Wolfgang Muthspiel. Wish List is simple enough. It's a straight-ahead recording, with a track ...

Wolfgang Muthspiel Trio: Bright Side

by Chris May
March 6, 2006

Like the earlier guitar master Johnny Smith, whose extraordinary melodicism and dazzling technique he shares, Wolfgang Muthspiel offers a rare combination of accessibility and sophistication. And with Bright Side he's created an album as lyrical, elegant and poised as Smith's 1953 masterpiece, Moonlight In Vermont (reissued by Roulette, 2004). It's heart-stoppingly beautiful music, and I haven't heard anything as gorgeous, luscious, joyous, shimmering, subtle and divine since Hendrik Meurkens' Amazon River (Blue Toucan, 2005) last summer.

Though he's won numerous ...

Mike Holober: Canyon

by John Kelman
December 10, 2003

With a strong supporting cast, New York pianist Mike Holober's Canyon delivers a fine first effort of modern post-bop material. Producer Fred Hersch takes Holober, a busy sideman on the New York scene, and places him in the spotlight, garnering the artist broader recognition.

Holober is a lyrical pianist coming from the Evans/Jarrett/Jamal tradition, but while his playing on Canyon is strong and confident, his compositions are the real highlight of the release. The seven originals run the ...

Mike Holober: Canyon

by Michael P. Gladstone
December 4, 2003

Mike Holober, pianist and composer of most of these songs, is the nominal leader of this combo. However, the bulk of the melody chores are handed to saxophonist Tim Ries. Herein lies the difference. Ries, a veteran New York session player and recording artist with three releases under his own name, plays both soprano and tenor sax. On soprano, he plays with a more metallic sound that takes away from the melody; his approach on tenor is much in the ...

Mike Holober: Canyon

by Dan McClenaghan
October 19, 2003

Pianist/composer Mike Holober's songs brim with shifting textures and moods, like the color changes wrought by the inexorbably-shifting angles of sunlight playing upon the striations of a canyon wall. Holober spends free time hiking and climbing, and he wrote the title tune for Canyon after a trip to Utah's Paria Canyon, an experience that inspired a song full of seamlessly shifting grooves.Those shifts and changes within a composition – done while maintaining an entrancing accessibility – are Holober's ...