Jazz Articles

Kerry Politzer Quartet: Labyrinth

by Ken Franckling
December 1, 2005

Over the past few years, New England Conservatory graduate Kerry Politzer has emerged as one of the more interesting younger composers on the New York jazz scene. She leads a modern jazz trio and a Brazilian repertoire quartet to showcase her compositions. Labyrinth is her third release since 1999 and it draws from the best of those intersecting worlds: modern jazz with a Brazilian undercurrent. It's all original, often multi-layered material. Politzer is joined on this session by ...

Kerry Politzer Quartet: Labyrinth

by Michael P. Gladstone
October 11, 2005

The press release accompanying pianist/composer Kerry Politzer's third album professes her love of Brazilian music and straight-ahead jazz. We certainly hear some good examples of her approach to samba, but most of this album is squarely in the category of well developed mainstream jazz in a trio and quartet setting. Politzer is joined by Andrew Rathbun, dividing his time on tenor and soprano sax on half of this album, plus bassist Chris Higgins and drummer George Colligan. (Colligan is perhaps ...

Kerry Politzer Quartet: Labyrinth

by Dan McClenaghan
October 5, 2005

Pianist/composer Kerry Politzer's third CD as a leader, Labyrinth, is described as a set of “Brazilian and jazz" originals. For this listener, the word “Brazilian" evokes lilting rhythms and gentle melodies, but the disc's opener, “Rhodes Rage," a fast samba, has more rage than gentleness. The tune proves itself a high-octane cooker, featuring Andrew Rathbun on tenor saxophone playing with some fiery swing. Politzer's solo--an extension of her sharp-edged opening--is an intricate, propulsive, percussive interlude, beautiful in an in-your-face fashion, ...

Kerry Politzer Quartet: Labyrinth

by John Kelman
September 17, 2005

For her third outing as a leader, pianist/composer Kerry Politzer ups the ante by working with a couple of players who, while not exactly household names, have some cachet in the New York community. Chris Higgins, a lithe bassist with a tone not unlike Dave Holland's, may be as relatively unknown as Politzer, but saxophonist Andrew Rathburn has been establishing a reputation on a number of superb records for Spain's Fresh Sound New Talent label--both as a writer of cerebral ...

Kerry Politzer: Watercolor

by Javier AQ Ortiz
August 1, 2002

Quick and to the Point : Classy jazz trio music.

Watercolor features a happy coincidence between title and content. According to the Tallahassee Watercolor Society , the “fleeting effects of nature" are best captured through watercolor's “inherent luminosity" and “capacity for rapid execution." The Jazzification of Classical aesthetics one finds in this oeuvre is conceived from conceptual and technical akin views and practices present in both the histories of jazz and watercolor, and well represented herein. A quick ...