Multiple Reviews
Two Unearthed Live Gems By Rahsaan Roland Kirk
by Michael Blake
What a joy it was to sit down with these never-before-heard live recordings from American jazz genius Rahsaan Roland Kirk. Unearthed by producer Zev Feldman and released in tandem by Resonance Records, these beautifully packaged CD sets--complete with striking artwork, evocative photos, and heartfelt personal reflections--are a marvelous tribute in their own right. I was first introduced to Kirk as a teenager while visiting friends whose parents' record collections often included his more commercially successful albums like The ...
Continue ReadingThe Genius of Ray Charles is on display in this four-album Tangerine Records Master Series
by Bridget A. Arnwine
Ray Charles Robinson, known the world over as multi-award-winning icon Ray Charles, may have departed this world, but his music endures thanks in part to the Ray Charles Foundation. Recently, the Foundation released four albums as part of the Tangerine Records Master Series. Those albums which include Come Live with Me, Ingredients in a Recipe for Soul (1963), Love Country Style (1970), and No One Does It Like Ray Charles were released as individual projects throughout 2025. While Ingredients in ...
Continue ReadingSeamus O'Muinechain's Worlds of Sound
by Geno Thackara
We all know how the world is, unfortunately, full of people who talk endlessly while saying nothing. More rare and refreshing are the opposite kind, who can speak very little and yet still say a whole lot with a few words. With an evocative sound somewhere between folky and quasi-ambient, pianist Seamus O'Muineachain is like the unassuming dinner guest who never needs to clamor to be heard, but can chip in a keen insight when a little space opens up. ...
Continue ReadingA Muse Renaissance: Reissues from Roy Brooks, Kenny Barron, and Carlos Garnett
by C. Andrew Hovan
The independent jazz label has long served as a bellwether for the music's highest artistry, ever since the advent of the long-playing record. Labels such as Verve Records, Blue Note Records, Prestige Records, Contemporary Records, and Riverside--each a modest operation led by passionate entrepreneurs--were devoted to documenting the sound of their era with fidelity and purpose. As rock and other modern styles began to overshadow mainstream jazz in the early 1970s, producer Joe Fields emerged as a tireless advocate for ...
Continue ReadingA Savoy Revival: New OJCs from Hank Mobley & Yusef Lateef
by C. Andrew Hovan
Although the Concord Music Group acquired the legendary Savoy Records archives in 2017, the catalog has seen little reissue activity since. Founded in 1942 by Herman Lubinsky, Savoy earned distinction for documenting rhythm and blues, gospel, and jazz over several decades. The label captured many of bebop's pioneering voices--Charlie Parker, Dexter Gordon, Kenny Clarke, and Dizzy Gillespie, among them--on a series of landmark recordings. By the mid-1970s, Savoy endured a turbulent stretch of shifting distribution deals, first aligning ...
Continue ReadingOne first-timer to Another Timbre, one second timer
by John Eyles
As the Another Timbre label approaches its two hundred and fiftieth release (it could be part of the label's next batch of five releases) it seems a fitting time to assess its place in history. As with most instantly recognisable labels--Blue Note in its heyday, ECM, HatHut...-an Another Timbre release is instantly recognisable from its white front cover surrounding a work of art. Nowadays, the music inside is likely to be as recognisably Another Timbre as its sleeve. Of course, ...
Continue ReadingThe "Jazz Detective" Finds A New Muse, Reissues Lost Classics
by Joshua Weiner
Joe Fields (1929-2017) was a jazz producer and record executive who worked for Columbia, MGM, Verve, and, most impactfully, at Prestige in the 1950s and 1960s. Shortly after Prestige was sold to Fantasy in 1971, ending a classic era for the storied label, Fields founded Muse Records to document the next phase in jazz. Muse brought new music from many great artists of the era to the listening public, including Pat Martino, Cedar Walton, Carlos Garnett, and Kenny Barron, as ...
Continue ReadingInteresting Albums from the Past Few Months
by Jerome Wilson
Here are five worthwhile jazz albums released in the past few months. Billy Mohler The Eternal Contagious Music2025 Bassist Billy Mohler leads a fiery quartet on this album rooted in the sound of his authoritative bass mixing with Jeff Parker's guitar and Devin Daniels' alto saxophone. The music, built on simple vamps, dances and throbs easily with alto and guitar soulfully flying over the rumbling power of the bass and drums. ...
Continue ReadingTwo Great Composers From Decades Apart
by John Eyles
Although the Another Timbre label was originally set up in 2007 to release recordings of improvised music--its very first release was The Contest of Pleasures by John Butcher, Axel Dorner and Xavier Charles--it did not take long for it to be releasing recordings of modern compositions... The label's tenth release, Lost Daylight, was played by John Tilbury on piano and comprised five compositions by Terry Jennings and one by the late John Cage. It was not long until the label ...
Continue ReadingHat Hut Records at Fifty
by John Eyles
The three albums below are some of the ezz-thetics and First Visit album releases that arrived in 2025 adorned with a sticker featuring a large 50 on it plus the explanation, “celebrating 50 years of Hat Hut records." Rewinding fifty years, we find that Hat Hut was founded by Werner X. Uehlinger in 1975, the first Hat Hut release being Black Magic Man by a Joe McPhee quartet which had been recorded live in concert at Vassar College, New York, ...
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