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Daily articles carefully curated by the All About Jazz staff. Read our popular and future articles.

ALBUM REVIEW March 24, 2020

Jonah Prazen-Johnson: Imagine Giving Up

Read "Imagine Giving Up" reviewed by Karl Ackermann

When Jonah Parzen-Johnson released his first full-length album, Michiana (Primary Records, 2012), the Brooklyn-based artist seemed to give priority status to the electronics through which he filtered his baritone saxophone compositions. Even more so, Parzen-Johnson's 2015 follow up, Remember When Things Were Better Tomorrow (also on Primary), was dominated by ambient drones. Parzen-Johnson has continued to develop his approach and on Imagine Giving Up we hear more complex applications for both the baritone and the synthesizer and a more human ...

MULTIPLE REVIEWS February 20, 2020

Two Going Solo

By Friedrich Kunzmann

No, the title of this review doesn't refer to the autobiographical story of similar name, which tells of a young Roald Dahl looking for adventure in Africa. But like the protagonist of that book, the two individuals discussed in the following prove similarly adventurous in their own right and dig deep into the vast repertoire of their respective instruments to tell their own original tales--in a musical way. Ville Herrala Pu We Jazz Records

ALBUM REVIEW May 31, 2019

Jonah Parzen-Johnson: Helsinki 8.12.18

By Karl Ackermann

Chicago native Jonah Parzen-Johnson has music degrees from NYU and Manhattan School of Music, and the tutelage of the AACM in his background, but he keeps all that at arms-length. The Brooklyn resident continues to pursue his inimitable experimental music on Helsinki 8.12.18, his fourth solo album to feature baritone saxophone and electronics. The session was recorded at Helsinki's We Jazz Festival in December 2018. The set opens with a beautifully atmospheric “This Is How It Works," sounding ...

ALBUM REVIEW September 17, 2017

Jonah Parzen-Johnson: I Try To Remember Where I Come From

By Glenn Astarita

Originally from Chicago, baritone saxophonist Jonah Parzen-Johnson calls Brooklyn, N.Y. home these days but absorbed the creative spirit resident in the Windy City's progressive jazz legacy early on his career, studying and performing with some of the best. For example, he learned a great deal under the tutelage of woodwinds master Mwata Bowden, who is a member of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians. With his fourth album as a leader and first for Clean Feed, the artist ...

ALBUM REVIEW June 30, 2017

Jonah Parzen-Johnson: I Try To Remember Where I Come From

By Karl Ackermann

Chicago native and Brooklyn resident Jonah Parzen-Johnson has strong links to the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), having studied with that organization's Mwata Bowden. Parzen-Johnson--a co-leader of the Afro-beat ensemble, Zongo Junction--plays the baritone saxophone and analog synthesizers in each of his lofi solo outings, to date. His new album I Try To Remember Where I Come From furthers Parzen-Johnson's exploration of his genre-defying music.A creator of experimental music in a different vein, Parzen-Johnson had ...

ALBUM REVIEW October 2, 2015

Jonah Parzen-Johnson: Remember When Things Were Better Tomorrow

By Dave Wayne

In the hands (and minds) of certain artists, self-imposed limitations can actually become fertile ground for creative work- arounds, new strategies, new ways of seeing and hearing things. Multi-instrumentalist Jonah Parzen-Johnson is one such artist. Parzen-Johnson plays baritone saxophone and analog synthesizer simultaneously and spontaneously. No overdubs or studio trickery. As you might imagine, his music is quite distinctive. After listening to Remember When Things Were Better Tomorrow, I would say that what Parzen-Johnson is doing is attempting to merge ...

ALBUM REVIEW September 3, 2015

Jonah Parzen-Johnson: Remember When Things Were Better Tomorrow

By Dan Bilawsky

Hymn-like melodies, oscillating and quivering sounds, and a mixture of solemnity and adventurousness all inform the solo work of saxophonist Jonah Parzen-Johnson. On Remember When Things Were Better Tomorrow, Parzen-Johnson is all by his lonesome with his baritone saxophone and analog synthesizer, creating what could rightly be described as trance spirituals for the modern epoch or, in the words of the man himself, “lo-fi experimental folk music." Parzen-Johnson, a Chicago native who's now based in Brooklyn, was ...