Jazz Articles
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Jake Hertzog: The Ozark Concerto
by Richard J Salvucci
As Terry Teachout very accurately wrote, “The relationship between jazz and classical music has often been close...but is ultimately equivocal" ("Jazz and Classical Music: To the Third Stream and Beyond," in Bill Kirchner, editor, The Oxford Companion to Jazz, Oxford University Press, 2000). Equivocal is a tough word. It can mean suspicious, doubtful or uncertain. Spend any time around musicians in either camp and you find out about suspicions, doubts and uncertainties. They range from 'overpaid' to 'tissue paper lip' ...
Continue ReadingAdrian Galante: Introducing Adrian Galante
by Jack Bowers
The late Phil Woods used to argue that of all the members of the woodwind family, the clarinet is by far the most difficult to manage, saying it was “designed by six guys who had never met one another." If Australian-born, New York-based clarinetist Adrian Galante has any problems with the instrument, they are in no way apparent on his debut album, Introducing Adrian Galante, wherein listeners are introduced to a talented and versatile young artist whose growth to date ...
Continue ReadingJake Hertzog: The Ozark Concerto
by Jack Bowers
Jake Hertzog's ambitious Ozark Concerto showcases his lithe electric guitar in a well-intended but only moderately successful seven-movement opus, accompanied for the most part by the 23-member Arkansas-based Ozark Jazz Philharmonic (whose existence may seem improbable but is nonetheless true). The concerto premiered in April 2024 at the UARK Jazz Festival on the Fayetteville campus of the University of Arkansas. Hertzog wrote the concerto and arranged much of it, with the OJP's director, Susumu Watanabe, providing several ...
Continue ReadingPaul Kendall: My Shining Hour
by Jack Bowers
If you were to randomly draw the names of “most charming and best-loved American popular standards" out of a hat, chances are you could not fare much better than Pennsylvania-based baritone saxophonist Paul Kendall has by design on My Shining Hour, a splendid album whose playlist encompasses no less than eight singular and seductive melodies from the Great American Songbook. Of course, no melody, regardless of its inherent elegance and charm, is sufficient by itself to garner sweeping ...
Continue ReadingLivio Almeida: Brasília Sessions
by Richard J Salvucci
This is a good recording by a very good instrumentalist. Livio Almeida is a Brazilian saxophonist living in New York, but whether or not Almeida sounds particularly “Brazilian" is for others to say. Frankly, his tenor playing is straight ahead and while there are Latin rhythms galore, Almeida's “Brasilia Afro Samba" really recalls the guitar riff from Deep Purple's “Smoke On The Water" more than anything else. But never mind. His phrasing is muscular and aggressive, and he does not ...
Continue ReadingArturo O'Farrill: Mundoagua: Celebrating Carla Bley
by Jack Bowers
Mundoagua, the latest album by composer and pianist Arturo O'Farrill's Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra, is subdivided into three suites, the second of which is the four-movement “Blue Palestine," written and arranged by another celebrated composer and pianist, Carla Bley, a leading light in the avant-garde free jazz movement of the mid-twentieth century, who died of cancer in October 2023. The opening suite, “Mundoagua," commissioned by the Columbia University School of the Arts in 2018 to commemorate the ...
Continue ReadingSharon Isbin: Live in Aspen
by Scott Gudell
Ground Zero for guitarist Sharon Isbin has long been anchored in the world of western classical music. Her training was extensive and, beginning in the mid-1970s, she began winning several prestigious awards. Although she began releasing albums in the late 1970s, it took until just before the turn of the century--1999--before she secured her first Grammy nomination. She did not win the top honor that year but it is an amazing accomplishment to be nominated in and of itself. But ...
Continue ReadingMonika Herzig's Sheroes: All in Good Time
by Dan Bilawsky
Time waits for no woman. In terms of the importance of creating an ensemble to promote and empower female musicians, pianist Monika Herzig came to that realization back in 2014. So she did what was needed, gathering a band of Sheroes to deliver music and message to the people. Now, ten years later, Herzig can look back with pride on what she's created, celebrate the present with this group's fourth record, and contemplate the future for a band that's had ...
Continue ReadingPaul Kendall: Whisper Not
by Jack Bowers
An organ trio led not by the organist, Dan Kostelnik, but by tenor saxophonist Paul Kendall. Makes no difference, as the music on Whisper Not is delightful, and Kostelnik and Kendall sound like they've been playing together for years instead of for the first time on this impressive studio date, recorded in March 2023. The trio (Rudy Petschauer is the drummer) break no new ground; they simply embrace a series of popular and jazz standards--along with a ...
Continue ReadingAntonio Gavrila: Tango Suite Buenos Aires
by Jack Bowers
Astor Piazzolla, the Brazilian master who modernized and forever changed the profile of the tango, starting in the late '50s, died in 1992, several years before pianist Antonio Gavrila was born, halfway around the world in Bucharest, Romania. To Gavrila, Piazzolla was more than a name or even a reformer; he was--and remains--an inspiration, one whose music serves as the driving force behind Tango Suite Buenos Aires, Gavrila's second album as leader and first for Zoho Music. ...
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