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Mark Sullivan's Best Releases of 2017
No genre breakdown this year. I've included every release that I rated at 4.5 stars or better, plus a number of 4 star reviews (that was the hard part, as there were lots of those). ECM had an exceptionally strong year, and I had trouble limiting my selection even this much. This is a chronological list, not a ranking. Club D'Elf Live at Club Helsinki Face Pelt Records Wingfield Reuter Stavi ...
read moreMatt Wilson: Honey And Salt
Drummer/composer Matt Wilson has a long-standing interest in Carl Sandburg's poetry: his debut as a leader, Wave Follows Wave (Palmetto, 1996), was named for a Sandburg poem; Humidity (Palmetto, 2003) included a Sandburg setting of “Wall Shadows"; and An Attitude for Gratitude (Palmetto, 2012) featured the Sandburg-inspired “Bubbles." But this project (begun in 2002 with the help of a Chamber Music America New Works grant) is entirely inspired by the poetry, and coincides with the 50th anniversary of Sandburg's death ...
read moreMatt Wilson: Honey And Salt
Drummer Matt Wilson has some personal connections to the great Midwestern poet Carl Sandburg in that they were both born in Knox County, Illinois and they are distantly related by marriage. Wilson has long been fascinated by Sandburg's writing and has done musical settings of his work for a long time but with Honey And Salt he finally devotes an entire CD to his poetry. He does this with the help of several musicians known for their own ...
read moreMatt Wilson: Honey And Salt
We will forgive you if you believed drummer Matt Wilson's previous recording Beginning Of A Memory (Palmetto, 2016) was a summing-up of his career to date. On that recording he invited just about every musician he has worked with as a leader. The conspicuous absence was, of course, Dewey Redman, who had passed on in 2006. Nonetheless, his latest project,Honey And Salt, music inspired by the poetry of Carl Sandburg, is an album he has been making since he strode ...
read moreMark Corroto's Best Releases of 2016
Nothing gives me such simultaneous joy and grief as selecting my top discs of the year. The task is akin to choosing your favorite child. Regretfully, I give you (in no particular order) my top 12. Please email mail me separately if you want my top 30 and include your top discs, I may want to spend my Christmas money on a few more titles. Matt Wilson Beginning Of A Memory (Palmetto) ...
read moreMatt Wilson’s Big Happy Family: Beginning of A Memory
For this mostly retrospective session drummer/composer Matt Wilson convened all of the members--past and present--of his longest established groups: the Matt Wilson Quartet, Arts & Crafts, and Christmas Tree-O. So it's not only a larger ensemble than usual, but also a melding of the different stylistic focuses represented by those projects. There are 13 players altogether, and although they don't all play on everything, most of them play on most of the tracks. The core group included all five horn ...
read moreMatt Wilson’s Big Happy Family: Beginning of A Memory
It's easy to imagine the phone calls, drummer Matt Wilson made, using his best imitation of Elwood from the 1980 Blues Brothers movie, “We're putting the band back together, we're on a mission from God." And like that, current members and alumni of the drummer's bands: the Matt Wilson Quartet, Arts & Crafts, and Christmas Tree-O assembled to commune and revisit the music Wilson's late wife Felicia loved.This recording was Wilson's first since he lost his wife to ...
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