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SPHERES at Nublu 151
SPHERES Nublu 151 New York, NY July 8 and August 6, 2019 SPHERES is a jazz collective recently started by keyboardist Jamie Saft and electric guitarist Chuck Hammer playing monthly gigs at Nublu, a loft-club showcase for new music in jny: New York City's East Village. Taking inspiration as well as its name from Thelonious Sphere Monk, their two gigs to date have seen Saft and Hammer pair up with top-flight rhythm sections and journey ...
read moreSteve Lehman Trio + Craig Taborn: The People I Love
It is easy think about the shock of the new that was bebop when listening to The People I Love by alto saxophonist Steve Lehman's trio. Not that Lehman plays bebop as it was in the 1940s. It took mammals millions of years of evolution to climb down out of trees and fashion tools, but it has taken but a few decades to progress from Lester Young to Charlie Parker, to Eric Dolphy to Rudresh Mahanthappa. Think Darwin's foot on ...
read moreWhit Dickey/Kirk Knuffke: Drone Dream
Duets with drummers form the bedrock of cornetist Kirk Knuffke's whole musical experience, ever since jamming with a friend in high school. Consequently, Drone Dream constitutes the third such twosome to appear in his discography. And he obviously finds drummer Whit Dickey--still best known for his tenure with fiery saxophonist David S. Ware and adventurous pianist Matthew Shipp--a sympathetic foil as it's the second entry with him behind the traps, following on from Fierce Silence (Clean Feed, 2016). The wonderful ...
read moreRon Jackson: Standards and Other Songs
Ron Jackson may have the bluesiest seven-string guitar in New York City. He peppers a carefully deliberate swing throughout every track on Standards And Other Songs, joined by Nathan Brown on acoustic bass and Darrell Green at the drum kit. As suggested by its simple title, the album is a collection covering a broad range of music, ranging from the 1920s to the modern era, from vintage jazz standards to pop, rock, and even rap hits. The melody ...
read moreDuke Ellington: Uppsala 1971
From his first visit in 1939 to a concert a few months before his death in 1973, Duke Ellington took special pleasure in visiting Sweden. He composed a “Serenade to Sweden" and wrote a new arrangement for a very Swedish pop song, “I en rod liten stuga (In a Red Little Cottage)." He also entered into a fruitful collaboration with Swedish vocalist Alice Babs. This album, recorded at a concert in the great hall of Uppsala University on ...
read moreEliane Elias: For The Love of Jazz
Grammy award winner. Child prodigy. Internationally renowned artist. Sophisticated and improvisational jazz pianist. A vocalist of style and grace. A woman of beauty and integrity. Yes, I am speaking of Brazil's gift to the jazz world, Eliane Elias. To be so fortunate to recently speak with this remarkable woman was a treat and memorable moment in time. We spoke about the past, present, and future. We certainly talked about her superb, and soon to be released, new album. We spoke ...
read moreCarrera Quinta: Traslaciones
As one would anticipate from the group's name--and the album's song selection--the seven-member Carrera Quinta (pared down from big-band size) plays music from South America, more specifically the Andes region of Colombia, interlaced with mainstream American jazz. The Latin Grammy-nominated ensemble's third album, Traslaciones, comprises seven songs showcasing traditional Colombian styles such as pasillo, bambuco and guabina as part of a research project developed at Universidad El Bosque School of Music in Bogota where all the members of the septet ...
read moreCorey Christiansen: La Proxima
Guitarist Corey Christiansen's early days recording for Seattle's Origin Records featured a pair of superb organ jazz recordings, Roll with it (2008) and Outlaw Tractor (2010). A versatile player, the guitarist expanded his vision with his “American West" set Lone Prairie (Origin Records, 2013), in addition to his “avant cowboy/surf rock band" on Factory Girl (Origin Records, 2016). Throughout Christiansen's eight Origin Records releases, with all their shifts and thematic changes, the music has held firmly to its ...
read moreDuduka Da Fonseca & Helio Alves featuring Maucha Adnet: Samba Jazz & Tom Jobim
Since 2007, drummer Duduka Da Fonseca, pianist Helio Alves and vocalist Maucha Adnet have been presenting the titular program at Dizzy's Club Coca Cola at New York's Jazz at Lincoln Center, and at other venues throughout the world. A concept set steeped in personalized history of varied sorts--Da Fonseca's, absorbing this hybridized style at the foot of the masters in Brazil; Adnet's and Da Fonseca's, working with the late Antonio Carlos Jobim; Alves' and Da Fonseca's, playing together in bands ...
read moreTom Rainey: Combobulated
Recorded live at Firehouse 12 in New Haven, Connecticut, Combobulated constitutes the fourth outing for what might be now seen as a free jazz supergroup, even if it wasn't when they cut Pool School (Clean Feed, 2009). The stars of saxophonist Ingrid Laubrock and guitarist Mary Halvorson have continued to rise in the intervening years, while drummer Tom Rainey has been at the top of the game since the early 1990s. While the group plies its trade under Rainey's banner, ...
read moreNotre Vie Comme Un Western
The Bastille Day broadcast included new releases from John Finbury & Thelma De Freitas, Calabria Foti, Peter Eldridge & Kenny Werner and Maggie Gould plus birthday shout outs to songwriters Jimmy McHugh, Joan Whitney, saxophonist Lauren Sevian, drummer Gayelynn McKinney, cellist Akua Dixon, bassist Iris Ornig, vocalists Suzanne Pittson, Debbie Harry, Luciana Souza and trumpter Carol Morgan. Playlist Lauren Sevian “Miss Lady" from Bliss (Posi-Tone) 00:00 Andrea Wolper “The Girls in Their Dresses" from Parallel Lives (Jazzed Media) ...
read moreTula's Jazz Club: Soliloquy to a Seattle Jazz Institution
It was the tail end of a long weekend. Temperatures had risen to 80 degrees under a sunny only-in-Seattle blue sky, the waterways and markets humming with a sea of humanity. It was not a night one would expect many to venture into the quiet, dark solitude of Tula's Jazz Club, where for nearly 26 years the best of Seattle's vibrant jazz scene had come to roost. The scene up and down Second Avenue in Belltown was its usual interesting ...
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