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CD/LP/Track Review
Triocity: I Believe In You
Here's a formula we've all seen before: take three musicians and let them loose on a program of standards and Great American Songbook chestnuts. It sounds all too simple and pedestrian, right? Guess again. When you're talking about the combined creative forces of multi-reedist Charles Pillow, bassist Jeff Campbell, and drummer Rich Thompson, the potential of said endeavor changes drastically. The whole is most certainly greater than the sum of its parts when those musicians come together as Triocity, and ...
read morePaul McCandless: Morning Sun
First things first. The full title of this decorous CD is Morning Sun: Adventures with Oboe--Paul McCandless with the Paul Winter Consort: A Retrospective. It covers sixteen recordings made by oboist McCandless spanning a forty-year period (1970-2010), all save three with the Winter Consort. Needless to say, a large number of musicians were involved; their names are listed in the CD booklet, accompanying each selection. McCandless plays oboe most of the way, English horn on “The Steppes of Central Asia," ...
read morePaul Rutherford: The Conscience
Recorded in 1999, but previously unissued, The Conscience unites iconoclastic English trombonist Paul Rutherford and Japanese drummer Sabu Toyozumi. It constitutes the first in a series of ten or so sessions from the Japanese Chap Chap label to be released by the Lithuanian NoBusiness imprint through to 2018. Both men were among the first generation of free improvisers in their respective countries. Although Rutherford died in 2007, Toyozumi remains active. Over the years he has played with just about everyone ...
read moreJorginho Neto Collective: Harlem
American jazz musicians for years looked to the exciting rhythms and exotic melodies found in Brazilian music, to nourish the music's evolving nature. In a reversal of roles, the Jorginho Neto Collective, a Brazilian ensemble immersed in urban fusion-funk, step out of their native boundaries to prove that they can play from deep in the pocket, and do it well. Riding on the acclaim of his previous releases Samba Jazz (2012) and Leste (2015), trombonist Jorginho Neto plugged into the ...
read moreFred Hersch: Open Book
In the aftermath of his coma and very possible demise back in 2008, pianist Fred Hersch blossomed from a status as a first rate jazz pianist into the rarified air of one of the handful of top practitioners of that art form. A series of post-illness albums, from Whirl (2010), to Alone At The Vanguard (2011) to Floating (2014), Solo (2015) and Sunday Night At the Vanguard (2016), all on Palmetto Records, are all solo and trio outings that reveal ...
read moreJohn Vanore: Stolen Moments
Although Oliver Nelson wasn't with us very long--he died in October 1975, age forty-three--the renowned composer / arranger / saxophonist bequeathed an impressive musical legacy and touched many lives along the way. Among his many admirers is trumpeter John Vanore who first met Nelson in 1966 at an Indiana University summer camp, a meeting, Vanore writes, that “changed and shaped my career." To help repay the debt, Vanore has recorded Stolen Moments: Celebrating Oliver Nelson, on which he has redeemed ...
read moreChris McCarthy: Sonder
You won't find too many jazz musicians eager to cover post-punk stalwarts Deerhoof on their debut record, as keyboardist Chris McCarthy does on Sonder. But maybe McCarthy's not too interested in being regarded as just a “jazz musician." If anything, the cross-genre creativity on display here suggests that McCarthy is trying to make music beyond category--and to a large extent he succeeds. The diversity of the repertoire itself reveals a great deal about the broad sweep of McCarthy's ...
read moreCheer-Accident: Putting Off Death
This Chicago-based prog rock unit incorporates seamless genre-hopping movements on its 18th album and third for Cuneiform Records. Clocking in at a little over 38-minutes, the musicians provide upper-tier compositions, sans any hint of filler material as opposed to cramming the maximum allowable bits and bytes into the standard CD limitations. Thankfully, each piece stands on its own via a kaleidoscopic perspective, where qualitative content serves as the nucleus of the artists' collective vision. From a pure, comparative ...
read moreAlbert Mangelsdorff: Albert Mangelsdorff And His Friends
The afterlife for Hans Georg Brunner-Schwer's storied MPS Records has been tough to track. After Brunner-Schwer sold the rights to Philips in the early '80s, the label changed hands several times--Polydor picked it up and passed it through a subsidiary, Universal Music Group acquired its holdings, Speakers Corner Records took over on the vinyl side of the equation, and then Edel AG finally acquired it in 2014. Now, in an effort to make the most out of this German imprint's ...
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