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Judy Carmichael: All Taken in Stride

By C. MICHAEL BAILEY

Swinger! A Jazz Girl's Adventures from Hollywood to Harlem Judy Carmichael 276 Pages ISBN: # 978-1979764414 CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform 2017 Pianist and vocalist Judy Carmichael is a jazz girl who has been performing professionally for nearly 40 years. In her memoir Swinger! A Jazz Girl's Adventures from Hollywood to Harlem she relates being told of her cervical cancer diagnosis this way: Doctor: “I must say you are taking this remarkable ...

Håvard Volden / Carlo Costa: In the Wake

By JAKOB BAEKGAARD

How would it sound if the American primitive guitar of John Fahey met the avant-garde of abstract jazz improvisation in the wilderness? Guitarist Håvard Volden and drummer Carlo Costa give the answer on their album In the Wake. The cover by Brooke Herr is an image of an abstract seascape that resides somewhere between the referential image and a manipulation that goes beyond the image. The same thing goes for the music that uses the recognizable sounds ...

Nicholas Payton at GetCloser Jazz Fest 2018

By ROBERTO CIFARELLI

Nomadic Treasures: Nomadic Treasures

By MARK SULLIVAN

Nomadic Treasures is a European-based collective. As their name implies, they take inspiration from musical styles from all over the world, including jazz, Western classical music, and Jewish and North African folk musics. Israeli pianist/composer Avi Darash wrote all of the music, with Catalan singer Nadia Basurto providing the lyrics. The rhythm section is filled out by Italian bassist Daniele Cappucci and Catalan drummer Joan Terol Amigó. Basurto's sunny voice enters immediately over the odd-meter groove of “Gnawa ...

Insub Meta Orchestra: Choices and Melodies

By JOHN EYLES

Switzerland's Insub Meta Orchestra (IMO) opted to release their fourth album, 13 and 27, on the UK-based Another Timbre label instead of the INSUB label that had issued their first three recordings. Now, with their fifth, Choices and Melodies, they have reverted to INSUB. The music on 13 and 27 consisted of two compositions by d'incise and Cyril Bondi, the driving forces behind IMO and INSUB; those two pieces were recorded at Studio Ernest Ansermet, in Geneva, in ...

Sean Khan: Palmares Fantasy

By CHRIS MAY

Palmares Fantasy is the fifth album to be released by British saxophonist Sean Khan under his own name or as the leader of SK Radicals. Like its predecessors, it is a blinder, in touch with the jazz tradition while absorbing influences from beyond it and wearing its political heart on its sleeve. The music is characteristic of Khan's wide-angled aesthetic. To make it, he travelled to Rio de Janeiro to collaborate with fellow outsider, multi-instrumentalist Hermeto Pascoal, and other luminaries ...

Wild Card: Life Stories

By JEROME WILSON

When British youth started picking up on the music coming out of America in the Fifties and Sixties their tastes were widespread. While some kids loved the early rock & roll of Chuck Berry and Buddy Holly or the blues of Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf, others grabbed onto the jazz played by the likes of Mose Allison and Jimmy Smith and saw nothing wrong with combining all three. That concept evolved over decades, scooping up other types of music ...

The Rarest of Ivories: Fred Hersch, Joey Alexander, Eliane Elias and Renee Rosnes

By DOUG COLLETTE

One of jazz music's most durable and venerated instrumental formats, the piano-led ensemble, trio and otherwise, has proven flexible beyond its surface simplicity, particularly in the hands of ingenious musicians like Fred Hersch, Joey Alexander, Eliane Elias and Renee Rosnes. Such composers/players, along with their esteemed accompanists, have optimal opportunity to bring their intrinsic creativity to flower in utilizing the sparse lineup and, in so doing, further bond with their bandmates. The musicians also continue to hone their collective and ...

Spring 2018

By DOUG COLLETTE

Jazz Journal is a regular column consisting of pithy takes on recent jazz releases of note as well as spotlights on those titles in the genre that might otherwise go unnoticed under the cultural radar. Charles Mingus Live at Montreux 1975 Eagle Records 2018 Right from the opening notes of Charlies Mingus' jaunty insistent bass, Live at Montreaux 1975 captures the idiosyncratic jazz icon's personality to a T. Challenging charts for the ...

Yuko Togami: Dawn

By DAN MCCLENAGHAN

Drummer Yuko Togami's Dawn arrives as a beautiful surprise. It is the debut of the Japanese-born and now New York-based artist. Debut sets don't carry great expectations--one hopes for competence and a hint of a flair for the art form, the occasional creative spark shooting up from an otherwise acceptable but perhaps mediocre effort. For a newcomer to the scene, this would be a success. Yet Dawn rises up over the horizon with a bright glow that takes things well ...