Jazz Articles about Yuma Uesaka

About Yuma Uesaka

Album Review

Is Idiom, from composer, saxophonist, and flutist Anna Webber, new classical music or jazz? Yes. Is the music scored or improvised? Again, yes. Last question: Is it demanding or easy on the ears? Both. On the heels of two stellar releases, the septet Clockwise (Pi Recordings, 2019) and the Webber/Morris Big Band recording Both Are True (Greenleaf Music, 2020), Webber was commissioned to present Idiom VI at John Zorn's Stone series. She expanded the material from one track heard on ...

Album Review

Yuma Uesaka and Marilyn Crispell: Streams

by John Sharpe
March 1, 2021

Reedman Yuma Uesaka enlists storied pianist Marilyn Crispell to realize a splendid program of his charts on Streams. Uesaka, who was born in London and spent his early childhood in Japan, before growing up in Michigan, is making a name for himself as part of a rising generation of New York-based improvisers. While not his leadership debut, (he issued an EP on graduating in 2015), this represents a serious statement of intent. He can be heard in saxophonist ...

Album Review

Colin Hinton: Simulacra

Read "Simulacra" reviewed by John Sharpe

by John Sharpe
November 13, 2020

It would have been a shame if drummer and composer Colin Hinton's Simulacra, released in 2019, fell through the cracks. On this, his second leadership outing in the wake of Glassbath (Snake And Cornelia, 2018), he captains a crew of current and former Brooklyn-based talent in a mysterious but satisfying set. Hinton merges compositional elements with unfurling interplay which sounds guided in its cohesion, but without any evidence of the joins. As a result the six cuts evolve naturally, but ...