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Album Reviews
Pureum Jin: The Real Blue
Although alto saxophonist Pureum Jin would no doubt shrug her shoulders and ask “what's the big deal," the fact remains that she is a South Korean woman playing American jazz and doing so in a way that affirms conclusively that the country's inbred art form is not only universal but gender-neutral. On her debut album, the rather recent graduate of the Manhattan School of Music sounds as assured and comfortable in the idiom as almost any native-born player--male or female—you'd ...
read moreDan McCarthy: City Abstract
The concept of homecoming is inextricably linked to the music that Dan McCarthy presents on City Abstract. Recorded in May of 2019, shortly after he had returned to his native Toronto after fifteen years in New York, this date finds the vibraphonist bowing to two of his biggest influences: pianist Carla Bley and vibraphonist Gary Burton. Those lodestars provide solid inspiration and clear direction for McCarthy, who works his way through originals and a few choice covers with a balanced ...
read moreHiromi: Spectrum
A beacon for jazz to come, since her adrenaline-pumped debut Another Mind (Telarc, 2003), pianist-composer Hiromi Uehara launches herself into her fourth decade with Spectrum, her second album alone at her Yamaha. The music, she hopes, celebrates the closing of one decade and the opening of the next and, without pause, it does, brimming with all the capricious three-dimensional imagination and invention that indelibly mark many fine recordings--her first solo Place To Be (Telarc, 2010), Voice (Telarc, 2011), ...
read moreKeith Jarrett: Munich 2016
The second coming of Keith Jarrett—post-Chronic Fatigue Syndrome—was well behind him by the time he performed in Munich, Germany in 2016. The piano prodigy is captured in ECM's home town at a Philharmonic Hall solo concert at the end of his European tour. His improvisational skills in top form, he displays his genius across twelve extemporaneous compositions and three encores, on the two-disc set Munich 2016. For this recording, Jarrett broke with his frequent practice of live improvisations ...
read morePer Mathisen: Sounds of 3 Edition 2
The power of three indeed proved to be a magic charm for Per Mathisen on the first Sounds of 3 (Losen, 2016), so it's probably only natural that he'd revisit the format sooner or later. What's more of a surprise, perhaps, is how things change. Where that recording was a loud and brash slice of jazz-rock, its colorful sequel slides more toward the jazzy side of that equation. This recording actually tones down the wattage just a little from the ...
read morelisa liu: Introducing...Lisa Liu
Lisa Liu's Introducing...“ is a great example of one of the subtly exciting things about “vintage" styles: that, no matter how observant, studious and sometimes even intentionally conservative the endeavor can be, human nature ends up evolving them anyway. Liu's general genre is called many things--trad jazz, gypsy jazz, et. al.—but the album is not merely a meticulous recreation of a period, but a capably produced amalgam of different pre-bop styles that she handles both dutifully and skillfully.
read moreGregg Allman: Laid Back Deluxe Edition
Gregg Allman's first solo album, Laid Back (Capricorn, 1973), is the ideal candidate for a Deluxe Edition reissue and remaster. Not only is the record an exquisite, one-of-a-kind piece of work in its original form, but the backstory is eminently worth telling as it sheds light not only on the creation of the album itself, but the fundamental relationship, at the time of the recording, between the Allman Brothers Band and its surviving namesake. Kudos to the curators, ...
read moreKit Downes: Dreamlife of Debris
Kit Downes' ECM debut marked a substantial departure from his earlier recordings with saxophonist Tomas Challenger. Wedding Music (Loop Records, 2013) and Vyamanikal (Slip Imprint, 2016) were rhythmically complex with abstruse melodies that tended toward repetitive patterns and drones. With his ECM title Obsidian (2018), Downes, still on organ, worked in a more solidly constructed environment, imparting Celtic and hymnal qualities. Challenger appeared on only one track of the otherwise solo recording. Downes returns to ECM with Dreamlife of Debris, ...
read moreJimmy "Duck" Holmes: Cypress Grove
Cypress Grove is the tale of two very different artists following well-tested and successful professional trajectories. While none of the Ur-bluesmen (Charlie Patton, Son House, Tommy Johnson, Skip James, Ishmon Bracey) are living, there remain a few musicians who knew them while they were still alive. One such musician is Jimmy Duck Holmes of Bentonia, Mississippi. One listen to the opening “Hard Times" will reveal the Ur-bluesman Holmes knew as one Nehemiah Curtis “Skip" James (1902 -1969). The flavor of ...
read moreShannon Gunn: Gunn's Ablazin'
Washington DC native Shannon Gunn makes a bold artistic and social statement with her stimulating debut Gunn's Ablazin'. Gunn showcases her talents as a trombonist, composer, arranger and bandleader as she fronts two different ensembles interpreting eight originals and four very diverse covers. The album starts with “Orange Noise," a commentary on the U.S. president's ample use of twitter. Gunn blows short angular phrases after which the rest of the band joins in, forming boisterous, thundering refrains. Gunn's ...
read moreChicago: Chicago Transit Authority 50th anniversary Remix
In what is perhaps a tacit admission of limited sales potential (and in turn the low profit margin on music in physical formats), on the 50th Anniversary Remix of Chicago's debut album (often known as CTA, there is no info in any form detailing the technical process of this sound enhancement. A single sentence on the Rhino label's site is identical to that which appears on the band's own web-page, one that might well have appeared somewhere within the replication ...
read moreMatthew Shipp - Mark Helias - Gordon Grdina: Skin And Bones
The Skin and Bones Music Series is an ongoing succession of creative music events in various venues in and around the city of Kelowna in British Columbia. The concerts have hosted a diverse group of jazz artists from veterans such as Peter Brötzmann to rising stars The Bjorn Kriel Trio. Among the series' featured acts was the power trio MGB, with guitarist, oud player, and oboist Gordon Grdina, Matt Mitchell and Jim Black. In 2018, Grdina returned with virtuoso pianist, ...
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