Recording News

Ozomatli: Fire Away out Now

Source: JamBase
April 28, 2010

OZOMATLI FIRE AWAY OUT NOW ON MERCER STREET RECORDS/DOWNTOWN RECORDS

Ozomatli Last week Ozomatli released their new full length album Fire Away. Fire Away is the three time Grammy Award-winning band's fifth studio full length, and first for the NYC based Mercer Street Records/Downtown Records. Produced by acclaimed producer Tony Berg, Fire Away features eleven new Ozo songs (full track listing below), including the first single “It's Only Paper," currently serviced to radio.

Fire Away is arguably Ozomatli's most diverse ...

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Brian Charette - Upside (Steeplechase)

Source: Master of a Small House
April 28, 2010

The hoary Hammond organ is an instrument oddly resistant to revolutionary application. A survey of its history in jazz yields only a comparative handful of players who have taken it to truly new places. Brian Charette isn't among that select few, but he does have something valuable to say as evidenced by the pleasures and strengths indicative to this debut. It's no coincidence that he counts Steeplechase label mate Gary Versace as a colleague. Both men take the lineage of ...

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Pianist Jacky Terrasson to Releases Concord Jazz Debut, "Push"

Source: Universal Music Enterprises
April 28, 2010

Concord Jazz proudly announces the release of pianist Jacky Terrasson's new album Push, available April 27, 2010. The album features a new working trio that includes recent Thelonious Monk Competition winner Ben Williams on bass, Jamire Williams on drums and a handful of special guests. Push, Terrasson's 11th overall album and Concord Jazz debut, moves forward with a program of invigorating new repertoire and standards that infuse the familiar with the unlikely, including nods to Michael Jackson. Ever since pianist ...

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The Stryker / Slagle Band Release "Keeper" on Panorama

Source: Jim Eigo, Jazz Promo Services
April 28, 2010

In jazz recording parlance a “keeper" is a take that is worth saving—one to be listened to over and over again. It's also a most appropriate heading for the fifth outing by The Stryker / Slagle Band, as it well describes not just the date's title track, but each of the other nine pieces that comprise what may well be the best effort yet by this remarkable quartet co-led by guitarist Dave Stryker and saxophonist/flautist Steve Slagle—one on which each ...

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Torah - The Scotsman

Source: Michael Ricci
April 27, 2010

27 April 2010 By Kenny Mathieson TOMMY SMITH & THE SNJO: TORAH * * * * [4 stars] THE Scottish National Jazz Orchestra has been underrepresented on disc over its opening decade and a half, but that situation is fast improving. This new studio recording follows last year's Rhapsody In Blue, and is another glowing testimony to the band and its director, Tommy Smith. Smith composed Torah in 2000 for American saxophonist Joe Lovano and the ...

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Give "Gator" Some Respect

Source: Riffs on Jazz by John Anderson
April 27, 2010

In 1964, sax man Willis “Gator" Jackson released the album Nuther'n Like Thuther'n on Prestige Records. This title neatly sums up the main criticism of Jackson: that he made a lot of records and they all sound the same. Granted, Jackson was no musical innovator, but one can still feel how his gritty, lowdown-blues blowing could stir a crowd in a dancehall on a hot Saturday night. Perhaps it's the Sixties version of “dirty dancing"? Jackson was born in Miami ...

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Legendary Bass Innovator Jeff Berlin to Release New CD

Source: Glass Onyon PR - Keith James
April 27, 2010

Clearwater, FL - Jeff Berlin is a legend of the electric bass, considered by many to be the finest electric bass player in the world. A true master of the bass, Jeff Berlin has played with the likes of Bill Bruford, George Benson, Allan Holdsworth, and even toured with original members of Yes (Anderson, Wakeman, Bruford, Howe) on only three days' notice. Much to the anticipation of his fans, Jeff is releasing a new jazz trio CD on his own ...

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John Hicks and Frank Morgan - Twogether (High Note)

Source: Master of a Small House
April 27, 2010

The passing of pianist John Hicks and altoist Frank Morgan within a year of each other was a sad blow to the High Note roster and the jazz community writ large. Both men had enjoyed a late career renaissance via the label and Morgan, in particular, experienced an artistic renewal through a series of critically-acclaimed recordings capped by a three-volume document of a stand at The Jazz Standard. This set is something of a posthumous swan song for each player, ...

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