Articles by Pierre Giroux
Various Artists: A Walk on the Wild Side: Classic Tracks from LA’s Legendary Central Ave. Scene (1944–1955)
by Pierre Giroux
What has always appealed about Central Ave. music is the chance to hear a city after dark, when the respectable world goes home and the real stories begin. In Los Angeles in the 1940s and 1950s, Central Ave. was alive with jazz, blues, and the first rumblings of rock 'n' roll. A Walk On The Wild Side, a vinyl LP, captures twelve recordings from a remarkable era, and listening to them feels like walking through a long- closed doorway.
Continue Reading...George Garzone: Themes For Good Friends
by Pierre Giroux
Tenor saxophonist George Garzone's album Themes For Good Friends is especially satisfying because the musicians involved seem to be simply enjoying the music, with nothing to prove. In the beautifully recorded session at Van Gelder Studios, Garzone has surrounded himself with fellow masters, including trumpeter Randy Brecker, pianist Luis Perdomo, bassist Santi Debriano and drummer Jeff Tain Watts, each of whom sounds like an old friend, listening closely and taking chances. The album opens quietly with Fred Lacey's ...
Continue Reading...Dave Bass: Trio Nuevo, Vol 3
by Pierre Giroux
The most enjoyable part of a listenable piano trio is the sense that no one is trying to prove anything. The music unfolds because the three musicians trust each other enough to leave room for surprise. A pianist has to know when to take charge and when to get out of the way, when a bass line needs encouragement and when the drums need space. On Trio Nuevo, Vol 3, pianist Dave Bass, bassist Tyler Miles and drummer Steve Helfand ...
Continue Reading...Matt Wilson's Good Trouble: Love Is The Whole Thing, We Are Only Pieces
by Pierre Giroux
Drummer Matt Wilson has never needed a soapbox to make a point. His drumming has always been open, as if the music has something to say. It makes sense, then, that Wilson has reconvened Good Trouble to continue making good music with good people, which he considers the most effective form of dissent. With Tia Fuller and Anisha Rush on alto saxophones, Jeff Lederer on tenor saxophone and clarinet, Dawn Clement on piano and vocals, and Ben Allison on acoustic ...
Continue Reading...Mike Catalano: A Trio Affair
by Pierre Giroux
There is something comforting about the way Mike Catalano's A Trio Affair brings his musical trilogy to a close. This release returns to where the story began in 1989 with A Rio Affair, followed 18 years later by A Manhattan Affair. Listening to this album, it feels as if Catalano is less interested in revisiting those albums than in recalling what he liked about them, namely the meeting of New York jazz and Brazilian rhythms. Catalano has also ...
Continue Reading...Benny Green: Renovation
by Pierre Giroux
There are pianists who play solo because they have something to prove, and then there are pianists like Benny Green, who have nothing to prove and regard the absence of a rhythm section as an invitation. On Renovation, his first live solo recording, Green seems to be enjoying himself. Most of these 13 performances were recorded before an audience at Dizzy's Club in New York City and have the immediacy of an artist thinking out loud, taking a musical idea ...
Continue Reading...WDR Big Band with Sean Jones: Jagged Edges Elegant Lines
by Pierre Giroux
The release Jagged Edges Elegant Lines: The Music of Ayn Inserto is hardly decorative. This live recording by the WDR Big Band, featuring trumpeter Sean Jones, presents an evening of Inserto's compositions that seem determined to keep two things going at once. First, the music can be angular, interrupted, and rhythmically unpredictable; second, it always has an underlying sense of direction. What initially sounds fragmented invariably becomes part of a grander design. That tension is what gives Inserto's music its ...
Continue Reading...Jalen Baker: RePaved
by Pierre Giroux
Occasionally, an album comes along that shakes up your thinking about what jazz can do. Jalen Baker's RePaved might be that album. On the surface, it is an eight- part suite about Houston's historic Black neighbourhoods, particularly the 3rd Ward, where Baker's family has deep roots spanning four generations. But on closer listening, it becomes more personal. Baker is not simply documenting places disappearing under the pressure of gentrification; he is keeping their memory alive through music. Baker ...
Continue Reading...Oliver-Smith Incomparables: Stomp Your Stuff
by Pierre Giroux
Many bands play early jazz these days, but few make it sound as if the ink is still wet on the page. The Oliver-Smith Incomparables accomplish exactly that on Stomp Your Stuff, a recording that salutes the musical language of Jelly Roll Morton without ever treating it as a historical artifact. Pianist Andrew Oliver and drummer Hal Smith lead an exceptional ensemble featuring Colin Hancock on cornet, Andy Schumm on clarinet-cornet, T.J. Müller on trombone-cornet-vocal, Jacob Alspach on guitar-banjo, and ...
Continue Reading...Sullivan Fortner: Leave That In There
by Pierre Giroux
Sullivan Fortner has never been an artist short on ideas. But Leave That In There feels different. It is the sound of a musician who has distilled everything he has absorbed from his deep well of Gulf South upbringing, from the piano giants and from spirituals and street parades, into his own language. It is easily his most personal record to date, a musical scrapbook of memories, ancestry, humour, grief, and resilience. The title draws on Spike Lee's ...
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