Jazz Articles
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Nadje Noordhuis: Full Circle
by Chris May
In terms of an honest assessment of an artist's qualities, press releases are rarely worth the paper they are no longer printed on. An exception is the release accompanying Australian-born, New York-based trumpeter and composer Nadje Noordhuis' exquisitely lyrical Full Circle. It is an exception partly because it is written by Elan Mehler, the artistic director of audiophile label Newvelle Records and a pianist who first blew the mind of this reviewer with his quietly sensational sophomore album, The After ...
read moreDave Liebman: Trust And Honesty
by Chris May
Dave Liebman's Trust And Honesty is the third release in Newvelle Records' limited edition audiophile-vinyl autumn 2022 Renewal Collection. It follows Elan Mehler's There Is A Dance and Michael Blake's Combobulate, both previously reviewed on these pages. Liebman's album is an unassuming little gem. It takes a master musician to take a selection of familiar ballads, give them simple, straightforward readings with an average duration of around four minutes, and come up with something so lovely and ...
read moreMichael Blake: Combobulate
by Chris May
The instrumentation alone promises something out of the ordinary. Saxophone, two tubas, trumpet, trombone, drums. Then there are the musicians, luminaries of downtown New York jazz. Michael Blake, Bob Stewart, Marcus Rojas, Steven Bernstein, Clark Gayton, Allan Mednard. And within seconds of the needle descending on track one, side one, Combobulate starts delivering on the promise. The album is one of four marking the return of audiophile-vinyl label Newvelle after a two-year hiatus. The approximate meaning of its ...
read moreElan Mehler: There Is A Dance
by Patrick Burnette
David Bowie's album The Rise And Fall of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars (RCA, 1972) includes instructions on the back: “To Be Played At Maximum Volume." Had pianist Elan Mehler's new trio effort, There is a Dance, followed suit, the slogan would be something like “To Be Played Only on Rainy Afternoons." There is a Dance, which celebrates memories of Mehler's mother, is a quiet, meditative album, one more drawn to rubato than momentum. There are moments of ...
read moreSkúli Sverrisson With Bill Frisell: Strata
by Ian Patterson
A meeting of minds, of hearts and of souls. Strata may be the first recording of the duo of Icelandic bassist Skuli Sverrisson and guitarist Bill Frisell, but so attuned are the musicians to each other's wavelengths, and so spellbinding their common language, that you could be forgiven for thinking they had played in this format for donkey's years. Originally a limited edition, vinyl-only release in 2018, Strata is now available for the first time on digital platforms, which is ...
read morePablo Ablanedo: Christreza
by Glenn Astarita
This LP clocks in at around 38-minutes and is a bit of a tease since it progresses rather quickly and may leave many listeners wanting more. Here, Argentine-reared pianist/composer/educator Pablo Ablanedo's compositional gifts often take on cinematic film scoring intonations and developments, executed with jazz luminaries who the artist met while attending the Berklee College of Music in 1999. Owing to his heritage, the leader infuses subtle Latin jazz foreground grooves into several movements, whereas the opener “La ...
read moreBecca Stevens and Elan Mehler: Pallet On Your Floor
by Karl Ackermann
Elan Mehler is well known as a producer and as co-founder of the all-vinyl Newvelle Records label, which he co-founded in 2016. Mehler's pianist-composer bona fides are long-established. His eight recordings to date have reflected a wide variety of approaches. The experimental remixes of Scheme For Thought (Brownswood Recordings, 2007), classical influences on Early Sunday Morning (Challenge Records, 2014), and the carnival raucousness of TJ and the Revenge (Little Lost Records, 2019) are in the mix. But, early on in ...
read moreEllis Marsalis with Jason Marsalis: The New Orleans Collection: For All We Know
by Pierre Giroux
Newvelle Records, which was established in 2015, believes that in this digital age there is an opportunity to build a new model for creating and distributing music. Each year, Newvelle releases a series of six albums, exclusively on vinyl, that pairs musicians with celebrated artists, writers and poets. The New Orleans Collection contains four single sleeve 180 gram clear vinyl albums, each of which was recorded in New Orleans between January and March 2020 at Esplanade Studios, a former church ...
read moreLittle Freddie King: The New Orleans Collection: Going Upstairs
by Pierre Giroux
Newvelle Records, which was established in 2015, believes that in this digital age there is an opportunity to build a new model for creating and distributing music. Each year, Newvelle releases a series of six albums, exclusively on vinyl, that pairs musicians with celebrated artists, writers and poets. The New Orleans Collection contains four single sleeve 180 gram clear vinyl albums, each of which was recorded in New Orleans between January and March 2020 at Esplanade Studios, a former church ...
read moreIrma Thomas: The New Orleans Collection: Love Is The Foundation
by Pierre Giroux
Newvelle Records, which was established in 2015, believes that in this digital age there is an opportunity to build a new model for creating and distributing music. Each year, Newvelle releases a series of six albums, exclusively on vinyl, that pairs musicians wth celebrated artists, writers and poets. The New Orleans Collection contains four single sleeve 180-gram clear vinyl albums, each of which was recorded in New Orleans between January and March 2020 at Esplanade Studios, a former church built ...
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