Articles

Gorka Benitez: S

By Mark F. Turner

With warmth and a rich brown tone, Barcelona saxophonist Gorka Benitez plays with empathy and a rustic quality. The veteran musician has been at the core of Spain's jazz scene for over ten years and has seen recent stints with artists such as pianist Emilio Solla y Afines and trumpeter John McNeil. While Benitez has been known to explore the freer jazz boundaries, as on The Free Session, his new double CD recording Sólo la Verdad Es Sexy (Only the ...

Gorka Benitez: The Free Session

By AAJ Staff

The Free Session presents Basque saxophonist Gorka Benitez in a dizzying variety of stylistic approaches. These mostly short performances focus more on the leader as a composer than as an improviser. And while some of the music may indeed by characterized as free jazz, some of the pieces are through-composed, and some are urgently swinging post-bop.

Benitez offers a glimpse of himself as a tenor saxophone soloist on “Diatonicism," which sounds like it could be a swinging but very abstract ...