Recording News

One Track Mind: Richard Nelson Large Ensemble, "Strive" (2011)

Source: Something Else!
June 6, 2011

In most big bands, the guitarist functions as nothing more than a member of an expanded rhythm section—and for a while it seems like Richard Nelson (even though it's his band, and all) had fallen into the same role on his forthcoming album, Pursuit. Then comes “Strive," the final large-ensemble piece. As the track begins, an angular initial stanza—sparked by violinist Jon Luoma's desultory exclamations—gives way to this billowing chamber-inspired combo of flute, viola and cello. Only then does “Strive" ...

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Solomon King - Medicine (2011)

Source: Something Else!
June 6, 2011

Over the course of the striking, stripped-down Medicine, former Detroit autoworker Solomon King returns to that moment when the blues moved inexorably away from the uplift that defined gospel music, and ultimately toward rock 'n' roll and then hip hop. The blues sought, at first, to define every-day concerns, but there were no easy answers. As with King's efforts here, it sought to render those things more real, to define them. That made the music, back in the days of ...

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Zoot Sims and Dick Nash

Source: JazzWax by Marc Myers
June 6, 2011

You're in for a huge treat, but you don't know it yet. Back in the 10-inch LP days, on February 14, 1955, tenor saxophonist Zoot Sims was in Los Angeles cutting a four-track session for Jump Records, a Hollywood label founded by Clive Acker and Ed Kocher in 1944 just after the first AFM recording ban was settled. The leader of the Jump date was Hall Daniels, a top studio arranger who went on to score the Beach Party movies ...

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Dave Grusin "Mulholland Falls"

Source: Sound Insights by Doug Payne
June 5, 2011

While Dave Grusin has crafted many a musically memorable soundtrack, highlights of which probably include The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter (1968), The Yakuza (1974), Three Days of the Condor (1975), On Golden Pond (1981) and Tootsie (1982), he is probably a more remarkable and more remarkably unheralded sound colorist, expertly matching music so seamlessly to an image as to be ambient sound. It's like a breeze blowing through a room, or the aural aura of unspoken emotion wafting through ...

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Gonzalo Rubalcaba -- Fe' ... Faith (2011)

Source: Something Else!
June 5, 2011

By Nick DeRiso Intense and beautiful, Cuban pianist Gonzalo Rubalcaba's new Fe' ... Faith, is this meditative wonder. Like the earth making its inevitable yearly circle, Rubalcaba returns time after time to themes and thoughts—but never approaches things exactly the same twice. Across 15 solo piano pieces, he eventually smashes through barriers between jazz, classical and pop music—something that underscores the record's one-world message of love and faith. That, despite the fact that it would have been easy for Fe' ...

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Helen Sung - (Re)Conception (Steeplechase, 2011)

Source: Music and More by Tim Niland
June 4, 2011

Pianist and composer Helen Sung is one of the new vanguard of young musicians re-making the mainstream jazz firmament in her own way by re- interpreting standards and adding her own original repertoire to the mix.

On this album, she performs in a trio setting, accompanied by the extraordinary rhythm section of Peter Washington on bass and Lewis Nash on drums, who have anchored many a great piano trio in the past, particularly with Tommy Flanagan.

This album covers a ...

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Daniel Levin, New Jazz Cellist, and His Adventurous Chamber Outing "Organic Modernism"

Source: Gapplegate Music Review by Grego Edwards
June 4, 2011

Organic Modernism (Clean Feed 212). I think I get it. It's a modernism that flows naturally out of the non-pretentious music-making of this chamber quartet, namely Daniel Levin, leader and cello, Nate Wooley, trumpet, Matt Moran on vibes, and Peter Bitenc on doublebass. This is music that may have a walking bass underneath it now and again, but the give and take is of an unforced avant sort. There are compositional elements but the main thrust is the improvisational space, ...

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Apple iCloud Advances Major Labels $100-$150 Million, Indies Get $0 (Zero, Zip, Nothing)

Source: HypeBot
June 4, 2011

Apple is advancing the major labels $100—$150 million to allow the launch of its iCoud music locker next week, according to reports. Google had apparently offered the same big labels $100 million to let it launch a robust cloud music service, but got bogged down over efforts to fight piracy. What are independent labels being offered for advances? According to Hypebot's sources, nothing.  In fact, to add insult to injury, Apple apparently offered at least some indies a smaller share ...

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