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Rich Brown

Rich Brown has been an active member of Toronto's culturally diverse music scene since 1992. He is currently a member of New York based alto saxophonist Rudresh Mahanthappa's bands Samdhi and Gamak, and has performed and recorded with some of the finest musicians in the world including Dapp Theory, Steve Coleman & 5 Elements, James "Blood" Ulmer, Vernon Reid, Andy Narrell, Angelique Kidjo, Glenn Lewis, Jane Siberry, David Clayton Thomas, and Bruce Cockburn, to name a few. He has appeared in the feature film "Glitter" starring Mariah Carey and the made for TV movie "The Natalie Cole Story" starring Natalie Cole, as well as the television series "Soul Food.†Rich also leads his own band rinsethealgorithm, and has appeared on over 60 recordings ranging from Jazz to Funk to Latin to traditional Asian and Arabic music.

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Radio & Podcasts

Dave Sewelson, Aruan Ortiz, Neil Charles & Rich Brown

Read "Dave Sewelson, Aruan Ortiz, Neil Charles & Rich Brown" reviewed by Maurice Hogue


Check out the final track and you'll hear why Toronto's Rich Brown is hailed as one of the finest electric bassists on the planet. His new solo album, Nyaeba, is filled with over-the-moon technique and electronic wizardry. English bassist Neil Charles' debut, Dark Days , is fueled by the words of James Baldwin, while guitarist Gregg Belisle-Chi continues to explore his fascination with the compositions of Tim Berne. Another solo exploration comes from pianist Aruan Ortiz, continuing to dig deep ...

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Album Review

Steve Coleman and Five Elements: PolyTropos / Of Many Turns

Read "PolyTropos / Of Many Turns" reviewed by Troy Dostert


Perpetually churning rhythms, telepathic detours, unexpected juxtapositions: these are the stock-in-trade of Steve Coleman's Five Elements. And once again the intrepid alto saxophonist's inimitable approach surfaces on PolyTropos / Of Many Turns, a generous, two-disc helping of music that manages to be both intricately complex and fundamentally accessible at the same time. With two live dates captured in France in March of 2024, one can easily appreciate the infectious energy Coleman's group can generate, with rhythmic and melodic permutations galore, ...

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Album Review

Pluto Juice: Pluto Juice

Read "Pluto Juice" reviewed by Glenn Astarita


The EWI (Electronic Wind Instrument) was popularized in the 1980s by the late sax great Michael Brecker, and allegedly is a difficult instrument to learn because the buttons are touch sensitive and its sound bank possesses the characteristics of multiple woodwind instruments. Moreover, the EWI contains a controller and a sound module and is not simply an electronic sax device. But highly regarded saxophonist Dayna Stephens seems to have surmounted any hurdles and conveys a rather all-inclusive scope on this ...

Album Review

Lara Solnicki: The One And The Other

Read "The One And The Other" reviewed by Alberto Bazzurro


Questo è il terzo album, dopo Whose Shadow?, del 2014, e A Meadow in December del 2011, a nome della cantante canadese (di Toronto) Lara Solnicki, presenza tutto sommato piuttosto anomala nel variegato panorama delle jazz singers per svariati motivi, che cerchiamo di sintetizzare. Anzitutto lei canta e dice (si definisce cantante-compositrice-poetessa), ma non su un terreno contemporaneo-aleatorio-concreto, come si potrebbe immaginare, bensì lungo brani perfettamente predefiniti, per attraversare i quali si affida alle cure di gruppi numerosi (ieri un ...

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Album Review

Lara Solnicki: The One And The Other

Read "The One And The Other" reviewed by Jerome Wilson


Lara Solnicki is a Canadian poet, composer and singer who combines all her talents strikingly on this album, marrying her words to a dense fabric of free-flowing jazz and improvisation. Solnicki bends her voice well to the requirements of each composition. On the singsong rhythm of “The Embrace," she sounds sensitive but slightly detached against falling piano and electronic whispers, while, on the cinematic construction of “Bit Her Sweet Christopher Street," her voice climbs through a busy tangle ...

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Album Review

Lara Solnicki: The One And The Other

Read "The One And The Other" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey


Among feelings are nervousness and anxiety. While synonymous in any thesaurus, the two words differ in the same way that thankfulness and gratitude differ, that is, in focus. Nervousness and thankfulness often have no focus, no definite object creating them. Anxiety and gratitude are those feelings, those reactions to the specific. Something clearly gives rise to them. With regards to anxiety and disquiet, Canadian vocalist and composer Lara Solnicki uses “free jazz" and poetry as the stimulus for generating a ...

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Album Review

Ernesto Cervini: Tetrahedron

Read "Tetrahedron" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey


Matthew Zapruder, in his book Why Poetry (HarperCollins, 2017), draws an informative parallel between reading poetry and listening to classical music: ...the act of treating poetry like a difficult activity one needs to master can easily perpetrate ... mistaken, and pervasive, ideas about poetry that make it hard to read in the first place. Like classical music, poetry has an unfortunate reputation for requiring special training and education to appreciate.... This same reasoning applies to jazz, ...

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Photos

Music

Recordings: As Leader | As Sideperson

Music Is Life

Self Produced
2025

buy

The One And The Other

Outside in Music
2021

buy

Pluto Juice

Contagious Music
2021

buy

Tetrahedron

Anzic Records
2020

buy

Occupational Hazard

Self Produced
2020

buy

Impulse Response

From: Music Is Life
By Rich Brown

Idee Fixe

From: The One And The Other
By Rich Brown

Evident Monk

From: Occupational Hazard
By Rich Brown

Stro

From: Tetrahedron
By Rich Brown

Videos

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