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Jazz Articles about Yasushi Nakamura
Joe Farnsworth: The Big Room
by Karan Khosla
The Big Room is about holding the fort and also about opening doors. Joe Farnsworth has logged time with Pharoah Sanders, McCoy Tyner, and Cedar Walton, but here he calls on the rising generation: alto saxophonist Sarah Hanahan, vibraphonist Joel Ross, pianist Emmet Cohen, trumpeter Jeremy Pelt, and bassist Yasushi Nakamura. Recorded live at Smoke Jazz & Supper Club in January 2025, Farnsworth invites his fellow bandmates to contribute compositions; the album captures an intergenerational sextet that knows how to ...
Continue ReadingCecile McLorin Salvant: Oh Snap
by Angelo Leonardi
Ogni nuovo disco di Cécile McLorin Salvant è un evento di rilievo ma da qualche anno si aggiungono stimolanti sorprese. Dagli ultimi due album --Ghost Song del 2022 e Mélusine del 2023--la cantante ha sospeso la relazione con il songbook statunitense e il repertorio legato al blues e alle radici, per presentare contenuti e soluzioni inaspettate con vari brani originali. Questo Oh Snap incrementa le nuove scelte. Tutti i temi sono personali, in una riflessione che riallaccia il ...
Continue ReadingCecile McLorin Salvant: Oh Snap
by Frank Housh
It feels like Cecile McLorin Salvant is just showing off. The 2020 MacArthur Genius Grant Award Winner follows up Ghost Song (Nonesuch, 2022) and Mélusine (Nonesuch, 2023) with Oh Snap, a post-genre effort with deeply personal lyrics that sound like they were lifted from the diaries of a rediscovered poet. McLorin recorded Oh Snap alone, learning GarageBand and AutoTune as she went. She said, “I felt I had lost a connection to music because it was something that ...
Continue ReadingAdrian Cunningham: It's About Time
by Jack Bowers
Australian-born, New York-based multi-instrumentalist (and vocalist) Adrian Cunningham brings impressive creds to his latest recording, It's About Time, raising the number of albums under his leadership well into double figures. And as if playing an array of instruments were not enough, Cunningham also writes, having composed nine of the album's songs and arranged all of them. The exceptions are George Gershwin's “Summertime" (from the folk opera Porgy and Bess) and the traditional “Battle Hymn of the Republic." ...
Continue ReadingChristian Sands: Embracing Dawn
by Mike Jurkovic
Way back in the mottled history of the 1950s and '60s, record biz guys in sharkskin might kick down a DJ's door and bark: “You gotta to hear this single!" But who truly listens to and what exactly is a single these days? Add in the disturbing though elusive truth that any single can take any physical or temporal shape and the evidence just points to one thing: First impressions have doomed many a pundit. If ...
Continue ReadingAmina Figarova & Matsiko World Orphan Choir: Suite For Africa
by Dan McClenaghan
Happenstance played a hand in two of pianist Amina Figarova's finest recordings. The first time around it was September Suite (Munich Records, 2005). Though based in the Netherlands at the time, Figarova was staying in New York City when the planes flew into the World Trade Center buildings on September 11th, 2001. The music for the album was her reaction to the event, to the grief and mourning it caused. Heading a superb sextet, she created a beautiful ode to ...
Continue ReadingClarence Penn: Behind the Voice
by Dan Bilawsky
Drummer Clarence Penn, a serious force on the scene for more than three decades, has worked with a who's who of vocalists--Betty Carter, Kandace Springs, Luciana Souza, Kate McGarry, Nellie McKay, Claudia Acuña, Paula Cole, Melissa Walker and Nneena Freelon, to name just a few. He knows more than a thing or two about history and creativity behind the voice, and he's here to show it with this sharply-constructed date. Working with a stacked lineup of singers and instrumentalists, and ...
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