Articles

The Doors: Break On Thru - A Celebration of Ray Manzarek

By Doug Collette

The Doors The Doors: Break On Thru -A Celebration Of Ray Manzarek Trafalgar Releasing Palace 9 Cinemas, South Burlington, VT February 12, 2020 The Doors: Break On Thru -A Celebration Of Ray Manzarek, lives up to the spirit of its subtitle. In the course of the film's roughly ninety minutes, director Justin Kreutzmann efficiently interweaves the main concert footage with interviews of the various participants plus vintage archival video in such a way ...

TuneTown: There From Here

By Friedrich Kunzmann

What happens in Canada stays in Canada. Sadly, this worn out phrasing tends to ring true when it comes to Jazz from there. Regrettably so. The jazz scenes in Québec and especially Toronto are as vibrant as they've ever been and produce some of the more interesting releases out there today. The drummer of the acoustic trio going by the name of TuneTown, Ernesto Cervini, is even more aware of this, seeing how next to being a musician, his second ...

Jesse Davis Quartet at Tracce di Jazz Festival 2020

By Danilo Codazzi

Dave Liebman: Earth

By Mike Jurkovic

It's taken over two tumultuous decades for Dave Liebman to fully realize and execute his poetic, elemental suite. Alongside Pat Metheny,Billy Hart, and Cecil McBee, Water: Giver of Life (Arkadia Jazz, 1997) birthed the the long journey. Teaming with violinist/sound engineer Walter Quintus for 2006's Air (Finetunes) led to 2016's free-jazz flame torch with Dave Holland, Kenny Werner, and Jack DeJohnette Fire (Jazzlines.) Wholly cognitive of his music's inert ability to rouse a myriad of cinematic possibilities and ...

Jeremy Cunningham: The Weather Up There

By Jakob Baekgaard

The complex landscape of human emotions is still vastly uncharted, but every true work of art adds a little piece to the puzzle. This can be done in many ways, but it is rare that an album connects emotion with complex layers of memory, interpersonal relations, politics and societal structures. Nevertheless, this is what drummer and composer Jeremy Cunningham's album does. In a statement, Cunningham explains the background: “I wrote The Weather Up There to confront the ...

Miles Davis: Music From And Inspired By Birth Of The Cool, A Film by Stanley Nelson

By Doug Collette

The most devout fans of the late Miles Davis will likely hear the selections on this album as touchstones of their collections of the jazz icon's work. More casual fans and dilettantes can listen and learn to the same cuts as guideposts to assemble their own. Neither approach undermines the value of the title as a worthwhile companion piece to Stanley Nelson's film. It's been said a formidable jazz library might be built from works by musicians with ...

Ira Sullivan: The Lonely Revolutionary

By David Einhorn

A critic in jny: Chicago in September 2016 raved about multi-instrumentalist Ira Sullivan's performance at the Jazz Showcase but said that Ira “erred" in lecturing the audience not to applaud after solos. It sounded like the critic had never heard Ira perform live before, because saying he “erred" suggested that at a given moment Ira “misspoke" and impulsively said something he should not have said. If that's the case, then Ira, who will turn 89 this year and ...