Articles by Mark Corroto
Twin Talk: Delights
by Mark Corroto
If you are familiar with “Born in Chicago" by the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, a song later covered by the Blues Brothers and the Pixies, you know the lyrics: “I was born in Chicago at nineteen and forty-one / Well, my father told me / Son, you had better get a gun." Later, the song offers a different kind of wisdom: “Well, now rules are alright / If there's someone left to play the game." In the 21st ...
Continue Reading...Nathan Hanson / Steve Hirsh: Memory Is Subjective
by Mark Corroto
It goes without saying that memory is subjective. Saxophonist Nathan Hanson and drummer Steve Hirsh might tell you that, apart from the experience of attending their October 2025 live performance at the 210 Gallery & Art Center in Sandstone, Minnesota, encountering the resulting recording is an entirely different affair. They would be right. Yet Memory Is Subjective is so sincere, and so expertly recorded and mixed, that the listener is placed almost directly within the audience's sound space, experiencing something ...
Continue Reading...Albert Ayler Quartet: Reference: Albert Ayler Quartet Goin' Home 1964
by Mark Corroto
On February 24, 1964, Albert Ayler entered Atlantic Studios in New York City to record a series of compositions that would help define the saxophonist's legacy and, arguably, alter the course of jazz. The Cleveland, Ohio, native had recently returned from Europe, where he had performed with Cecil Taylor's quartet and at the urging of Swedish saxophonist and clarinetist Bengt Nordström, Ayler recorded a program of jazz standards. That February New York session would eventually be released under ...
Continue Reading...Ivo Perelman, Elliott Sharp, Cyro Baptista: Triacontagon
by Mark Corroto
To better appreciate Triacontagon, it helps to wind the clock back to Brazilian saxophonist Ivo Perelman's recordings from the mid-to-late 1990s. Consider Man of the Forest (GM Recordings, 1994), Brazilian Watercolour (Leo Records, 1999) and Aquarela do Brazil (Atração Fonográfica, 1999). Each featured fellow São Paulo native, percussionist Cyro Baptista. Perelman, who began his musical life playing guitar, eventually gravitated toward the tenor saxophone and the music of Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane and Albert Ayler. Two of those early recordings ...
Continue Reading...Weave4: La Gomma Di Dante
by Mark Corroto
Did the quartet Weave4 reach back 700 years with an eraser and a comma to reimagine Dante Alighieri's famous words: “Midway upon the journey of our life, I found myself within a forest dark, for the straightforward pathway had been lost?" Well, not exactly. This French-Italian collective of pianist Benoit Delbecq, drummer Steve Arguelles, guitarist Francesco Diodati and Francesco Bigoni on tenor saxophone and clarinet follows up its self-titled album, Weave4 (Parco Della Musica Records, 2023), with 15 ...
Continue Reading...Chad Fowler / Eri Yamamoto: Polkadots & Moonbeams
by Mark Corroto
Some of the finest duo recordings give the listener the sensation of eavesdropping on an intimate encounter. The recordings of Tony Bennett and Bill Evans come to mind, as does the music of Billie Holiday and Lester Young. Polkadots & Moonbeams, by pianist Eri Yamamoto and saxophonist Chad Fowler, creates that same feeling. Although recorded in a studio, the performance sounds as though it might have been captured for the musicians themselves, an unguarded conversation between two artists listening closely ...
Continue Reading...Tommy Muellner: Solitary Moon
by Mark Corroto
Today's hipster jazz musicians do not play standards. Perhaps “poseur" is a better description for artists who deliberately eschew classic compositions. Yet standards and familiar songs serve an important purpose in jazz: they provide a shared musical language, a lingua franca through which musicians communicate and listeners can measure the quality of an interpretation. Maybe, just maybe, the poseurs avoid standards because they don't want to be found out. Chicago pianist Tommy Muellner is no poseur. In fact, ...
Continue Reading...Irene Schweizer: Piano Solo: Prelude To A Kiss And More
by Mark Corroto
It might be a touch of hyperbole to say the world wasn't ready for Swiss pianist Irène Schweizer's 1986 recording Piano Solo: Prelude To A Kiss And More. Yet listening to it some 40 years later, that may well be your first thought. Schweizer (1941--2024) had already established herself as a formidable improviser through recordings such as Wilde Señoritas (FMP, 1977) and Hexensabbat (FMP, 1978), both later remastered and reissued as a double CD by Intakt Records in 2002. She ...
Continue Reading...Satoko Fujii Orchestra Kobe: After The Storm
by Mark Corroto
Pianist, composer and orchestra leader Satoko Fujii tends to resist comparisons between her career and that of Duke Ellington. The analogy, however, is difficult to avoid. At a time when maintaining a large ensemble is an increasingly rare undertaking, Fujii has led an astonishing number of them. Alongside her solo work, duos and quartets, there have been Orchestra Berlin, Orchestra Kobe, Orchestra Nagoya, Orchestra New York, Orchestra Tokyo and the Bunker Ulmenwall Orchestra recordings. Her command of large ensembles can ...
Continue Reading...Earth Tongues: Phases
by Mark Corroto
When we think about a recording, we rarely consider its tactile qualities. We hear pulse, rhythm and momentum, the obvious physicality of sound. A rave, for example, can be experienced as much through the body as through the ears, its bass frequencies vibrating through bone and muscle. But the trio Earth Tongues approaches physicality from the opposite direction. On Phases, trumpeter Joe Moffett, tubist Dan Peck and percussionist Carlo Costa concern themselves not with overwhelming force but with minute sensation. ...
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