Jazz Articles

Seth Meicht and the Big Sound Ensemble: Live in Philadelphia

by John Sharpe
January 9, 2015

Philly tenor saxophonist Seth Meicht has created a crack little big band which combines nifty arrangements and adventurous expression in his Big Sound Ensemble. Meicht has largely passed under the critical radar since Illumine (CIMP, 2006), surfacing only for the occasional high profile gig in NYC, including the 2009 Vision Festival. This recording in front of a hometown crowd, inexplicably dated 2008 on the sleeve although actually captured on 19 September 2009, assembles a stellar cast for a generous program ...

Frode Gjerstad & Paal Nilssen-Love: Side by Side

by Glenn Astarita
May 19, 2012

Prominent Norwegian improvisers Frode Gjerstad (alto saxophone, clarinets) and Paal Nilssen-Love (drums) toured North America in 2008 sans a bassist, and recorded this album at a studio in upstate New York, accentuating their synergy via a largely rough and tumble implementation. Gjerstad shows a fondness for the upper-register and produces a myriad of microtonal and edgy sound-sculpting statements atop Nilssen-Love's bustling polyrhythms, infused with perpetual motion and resonating counter-maneuvers. Gjerstad's scathing tonal swashes and darting lines embody a ...

David Haney Trio: Blue Flint Girl

by Lyn Horton
February 27, 2010

Pianist David Haney pulls together a trio with two bassists--Michael Bisio and Adam Lane--on Blue Flint Girl. Not only does this unusual instrumentation peak curiosity, but it also leads to an uncommon sound. The beauty of recording for CIMP is that the music grows like a flower. The seeds are planted before the music starts and then it just goes. The water pours from the imaginations of the musicians. In the liner notes, Haney describes Blue Flint Girl as the ...

Kalaparush McIntyre: Extremes

by John Sharpe
November 12, 2008

With a relatively small number of recordings in his own right over a 40-year career, any release from AACM veteran Kalaparush Maurice McIntyre is cause for celebration. His fourth outing for the CIMP label showcases a new quartet featuring the even-more-underexposed Will Connell (alto saxophone and bass clarinet), longtime associate Michael Logan (bass) and childhood friend, but now master percussionist, Warren Smith, alongside the leader's tenor saxophone. In a 70-minute program mixing compositions with studio inventions, a ...

Stephen Gauci Trio: Substratum

by Stuart Broomer
April 4, 2008

Perhaps no combination of instrument and style carries the predictability of the free jazz tenor saxophone and it's to Stephen Gauci's abiding credit that he manages both to embody a tradition and refresh it at every turn. The over-the-top blowout is, of course, part of Gauci's vocabulary. Eventually it will all show up: mystical yipping onslaughts, Pharoah-esque polyphonic bursts, the Ayler birth wail, the split-tones and multiphonics--everything that's made the tenor the expressionist's instrument of choice. But it's all deployed ...

Salim Washington: Live at St. Nick's

by Jim Santella
March 13, 2008

Long a Friday night fixture at St. Nick's Pub in New York's Sugar Hill section, Salim Washington's Harlem Arts Ensemble--the leader on tenor, flute and oboe, pianist Donald Smith, violist Melani Dyer, bassist Aaron James, drummer Mark Johnson and trombonist Ku-Umba Frank Lacy, who also plays a mean flugelhorn--shares fresh ideas with an aware audience on this live document from the aforementioned club. In his liner notes, Washington points out that the Friday night audience is so hip that it ...

Michael Bisio Quartet: CIMP 360: Circle This

by Lyn Horton
August 9, 2007

A musical voice is hard to acquire for one musician much less a quartet. But there is always a beginning. The musical ingredients need to be simultaneously strong and viable. Compatibility of the instruments stands out as an element of connectivity. And the willingness from the band members to stick together is the glue that assures that a “sound will come through.

Bassist Michael Bisio leads such a band, formed in January 2005 and made up of Avram ...

Burton Greene: Retrospective 1961-2005: Solo Piano (August 18, 2005)

by Lyn Horton
June 4, 2007

Clarity of an all-encompassing vision can push a musician to say in music whatever is desired no matter what the response. This approach bolsters certainty and confidence which resultantly flows out of the instrument the musician plays. Both certainty and confidence exude from Burton Greene on Retrospective 1961-2005, Solo Piano. The recording is the third and only solo of a series by Greene on the CIMP label.

Chicagoan Greene was a founding member of the Jazz Composers Guild ...

Michael Bisio & Tomas Ulrich: Pulling Strings

by Kurt Gottschalk
December 21, 2006

Of all the string lineups, the bass and cello don't often get to hang together. The generally underutilized cello is often called in place of the bigger bass, or sometimes (as in Ron Carter's case) is used as a second instrument. The bass is generally not invited to string quartet parties, and it's generally paired with higher-pitched instruments or left with supplanting rhythm. Michael Bisio and Tomas Ulrich, however, find a terrain to stake claim to in the low-register duo. ...

William Gagliardi Quintet: Memories of Tomorrow

by Terrell Kent Holmes
December 9, 2006

Saxophonist William Gagliardi writes songs with a free jazz posture and a hard bop conscience, a duality which sometimes leads to a kind of psychic split at the middle of a tune. There are various examples of this on Gagliardi's quintet release Memories of Tomorrow. The discourse and tonality between Gagliardi's tenor and John Carlson's trumpet on “Coup d'etat follies recalls Ornette Coleman and Don Cherry. Ken Wessel's almost subliminal guitar is the wheel's axle and Lou Grassi's relentless drumming ...