Album Review
Daily articles carefully curated by the All About Jazz staff. Read our popular and future articles.
Fredrik Lindborg: Fredrik Lindborg: A Swedish Portrait
A time capsule is opened carefully, and its contents are respectively honored and revered. This is the purposeful and respectful sensation revealed on Fredrik Lindborg's faithful homage to the music of Swedish baritone sax legend Lars Gullin. While the arrangements are new, and at times brilliant, the creativity and ambitions of Gullin are richly intact. Lindborg's trio, featuring bassist Martin Sjostedt and drummer Daniel Fredriksson, invigorate with educated conversation while flying high on fiery octane. In unison with ...
read moreFalkner Evans: Marbles
On his fifth recording as leader, pianist / composer Falkner Evans has expanded his group size from trio (the first three) and quintet (the fourth) to sextet with vibraphonist Steve Nelson added on three of the album's ten numbers, the first nine of which were written by Evans. Even though this was a one-off, Evans' teammates are skillful enough to make it sound like a working ensemble. One reason for this is that the rhythm section (bassist Belden Bullock, drummer ...
read moreRalph Peterson & the Messenger Legacy: Onward & Upward
Generally speaking, legacy bands are created to preserve the music of an artist. They feature innovative interpretations of an artist's compositions or past performances to share with future generations of listeners. In the case of drummer Ralph Peterson, his ambitious efforts to honor the continuum of his mentor Art Blakey are forward thinking, about a collective gathering of resources that stress creative thought and individuality. Just as the true legacy of the Jazz Messengers portends, contributors are charged with replenishing ...
read moreThe Mark Masters Ensemble: Night Talk: The Alec Wilder Songbook
Alec Wilder was born in 1907 and died in 1980, and might well have been described as an eccentric renaissance man. He composed opera, musicals, film music, popular songs, and chamber music, along with publishing in 1975 one of the most read books on popular music: American Popular Song: the Great Innovators 1900-1950. The Mark Masters Ensemble is a tight knit and imaginative Octet which can stake their claim on mining the gold contained in Alec Wilder's popular ...
read moreCry Babies: Cry Babies
History hasn't left behind many traces of Cry Babies--its 1969 debut has until now been extraordinarily difficult (and expensive) to find on vinyl--other than these sounds. Most musician credits only list first names except for organ player Sérgio Carvalho and producer Durval Ferreira, whose career also includes work with Eurmir Deodato and Sergio Mendes. Saxophonist Oberdan Magalhães gets credit for the arrangements and for playing on them. Cry Babies throws itself so quickly and passionately into “It's My ...
read moreAntti Lotjonen Quintet East: ALQE
Bassist Antti Lötjönen is anything but a small name in the Finnish jazz cosmos. Holding down the deep frequency spectrum in some of the country's most renowned instrumental outfits, such as the electronica-infused jazz trio 3TM or the acoustic Ilmiliekki Quartet, Lötjönen has established a cunning reputation as a sideman leading up to this, his debut release as a leader with the so-called Quintet East. Accordingly high are the expectations of a musician of his caliber—expectations which are more than ...
read moreAntonio Adolfo: BruMa: Celebrating Milton Nascimento
Brazilian performer/composer Milton Nascimento has given the pop, jazz, contemporary and rock worlds an amazon of music that is almost impossible to comprehend in its entirety. With BruMa pianist-composer Antonio Adolfo and a cadre of outstanding Brazilian musicians he provides a highly stylized, exotic and utterly brilliant Grammy-worthy exploration of Nascimento's works. This album is so inviting and the performances so seductive that the entire album screams to be devoured in one luscious conceptual bite. “Fe Cega ...
read moreShowcase
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Come To My World by Jo Kaiat
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Generations by Aziza Mustafa Zadeh
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