Album Reviews
Sylvie Courvoisier: Amalthea
Let us risk saying that the current scribe of this review is being suggestive, sexist, and stereotypical, (but not misleading) when commenting that Sylvie Courvoisier's piano tempts and seduces man and woman alike, from beginning to end, on the stand-out, nee stand alone, Amalthea . It would surely not make said commentator wrong. With muses and temptations young and old coming at them from all sides--Courvoisier, kindred seductress, vibraphonist Patricia Brennan, and the gigolo rhythm section of bassist Thomas Morgan ......
SOURCE: All About Jazz
Héctor Lavoe: ¡Que Sentimiento!
Héctor Lavoe was one of salsa's first superstars. A native of Ponce, PR, he started singing as a child. After moving to New York, he hooked up with Fania, its founder, Jerry Masucci, and Willie Colon. Together, they conjured up a gangster image, mostly for show, for it was the sights, sounds, smell and feel of the Nuyorican barrio they embodied. The music went through a number of phases, but was always an amalgam of Afro-Caribbean, bogaloo and jazz: “bueno ......
SOURCE: All About Jazz
Marion Brown: Live in Europe 1968 & 1972
Live In Europe 1968 & 1972 captures Marion Brown at a pivotal juncture, balancing the kinetic energy of his earlier free-jazz work with a growing interest in more spacious improvisation. The saxophonist first achieved prominence thanks to his appearance on John Coltrane's monumental Ascension (Impulse!, 1965). However the raised profile did not translate into more work. He found greater acceptance following a move from New York City to Europe in 1967. Here he forged alliances with fellow expatriates bassist Barre ......
SOURCE: All About Jazz
Ken Vandermark: A Living Poets Group
Artists such as Michelangelo, Botticelli and Leonardo da Vinci relied on the Medici family to support their creative endeavors. Other influential patrons included Catherine the Great of Russia and Louis XIV of France, while in the 20th century, the Rockefeller Foundation and Peggy Guggenheim helped provide artists with the resources to create ambitious works. Today, crowdfunding platforms such as Kickstarter and Patreon offer alternative means of support, but they can hardly be expected to finance the large-ensemble projects favored by ......
SOURCE: All About Jazz
Max Light: Unlearning
Proving he is much more than just a talented guitarist, Max Light's latest effort, Unlearning, carries a great deal of emotional weight in addition to displaying his prodigious technique. Dedicated to his father, distinguished professor Paul Light, the album's concept concerns the elusive nature of memory and the challenges of disorientation when it no longer reliably anchors us. With recurring fragments of melody and subtle rhythmic shifts throughout, Light's compositions powerfully convey a sense of dislocation, yet there is a ......
SOURCE: All About Jazz
Kirk Knuffke / Marilyn Crispell / Thommy Andersson: Paintbrush
Like all things refreshingly human, Paintbrush comes with a backstory of kinship. And the story goes that comrade-in-arms cornetist Kirk Knuffke and bassist Thommy Andersson got in touch with pianist Marilyn Crispell and Crispell, ever one for a new fling, invited the pair to come to Woodstock, New York, as so many before them had in the years before. In January of 2024, come to snowbound Woodstock the pair did, to hang at Crispell's favorite studio, Nevessa Productions in neighboring ......
SOURCE: All About Jazz
Cory Weeds: Hip to Be Square Plays Huey Lewis & The News
In 2013, saxophonist Cory Weeds and organist Chris Hazelton used Hazelton's father's van to make a four-hour-long trip from Kansas City to a gig in St. Louis. There was one CD in the van's player: Huey Lewis & the News Greatest Hits. After several listens, an idea started to form in Weeds' head, namely that the music might work well in a classic jazz organ quartet setting. Weeds and Hazelton sat on the idea for more than a decade before ......
SOURCE: All About Jazz
Blumer-Dell-Geisser-Morgenthaler: Live at Loft Köln
Free improvisation can be a demanding proposition, particularly when four musicians dispense with familiar melodies, predictable rhythms and conventional solo structures. Yet the most accomplished practitioners understand that freedom alone does not guarantee compelling music. On Live at Loft Köln, bassist Fridolin Blumer joins vibraphonist Christopher Dell, percussionist Heinz Geisser and trombonist Robert Morgenthaler for six performances that emphasize collective intuition, contrasting textures and the delicate balance between restraint and confrontation. Recorded in Cologne, Germany in October 2025, ......
SOURCE: All About Jazz
RGG: The Soul Of Soil
Polish piano trio RGG celebrate their 25th anniversary with the release of The Soul of Soil. Formed in 2001 by bassist Maciej Garbowski, drummer Krzysztof Gradziuk and pianist Przemysław Raminiak, who were students at the Jazz Institute of the Music Academy in Katowice at the time, the group has since established itself as one of Poland's leading piano trios with Łukasz Ojdana replacing Raminiak in 2013. The trio frequently uses existing compositions as springboards for improvisation, and here they turn ......
SOURCE: All About Jazz
Bob Marley & The Wailers: Roots Rock Reggae: Bob Marley & The Wailers Live At The Hammersmith Odeon
Bob Marley & The Wailers: Roots Rock Reggae -Live at the Hammersmith Odeon is further concrete evidence of the discerning approach the late musician's estate has been applying to posthumous archival releases. In its packaging and production, not to mention its very appearance, this concert piece is wholly on par with the exemplary likes of The Capitol Sessions '73 (Tuff Gong/UME, 2021) as well as Live Forever: The Stanley Theatre, Pittsburgh, PA, September 23, 1980 (Tuff Gong/Island/UMe). Put ......
SOURCE: All About Jazz
Darius Brubeck Quartet: Live Again
"I think I play better on stage than in a recording studio," says pianist Darius Brubeck, so it comes as no surprise that his quartet's follow-up to Live In Poland (Ubuntu Music, 2019) is another live recording. Live Again was captured in Italy, where the band were invited to perform seven concerts in four days by the Brass Foundation of Palermo. Eight tracks are taken from the best performances from those concerts, together with an additional track recorded in the ......
SOURCE: All About Jazz
Jelly Roll Morton: New Orleans Joys: The Earliest Recordings, 1923-1926
Born Ferdinand Joseph LaMothe to Creole parents in New Orleans, Louisiana, pianist Jelly Roll Morton is arguably one of jazz's most influential figures. A groundbreaking composer, arranger, and bandleader, Morton helped move jazz music beyond itself. He expanded jazz's possibilities by bringing greater structure and compositional sophistication to a music rooted in improvisation. Drawing from ragtime, classical, and blues traditions, Morton demonstrated that jazz could be carefully composed and arranged without losing the spontaneity and spirit that made it distinctive. ......
SOURCE: All About Jazz
War: War Greatest Hits (50th Anniversary Expanded Edition)
While a massive, multi-disc expanded collection titled Greatest Hits 2.0 was previously issued in 2021, this successor scales back the War reissue to more compact configurations on both a single vinyl LP and a sole compact disc. While there is hardly any questioning the propriety of issuing this 50th Anniversary Expanded Edition--especially as it marks the milestone of America's bicentennial as well as the title's original release--its appearance in the marketplace brings up the question of the group's legacy, ......
SOURCE: All About Jazz
Stephan Crump: Passerine
Bassist and composer Stephan Crump has rarely been interested in conventional jazz architecture. His ensembles emphasize interaction, with compositions that leave ample space for musicians to reshape the music as it unfolds. On Passerine, Crump leads a quartet featuring Kenny Warren on trumpet, David Leon on alto flute and saxophone and Ches Smith on percussion. Inspired by the ways birds construct nests, the seven compositions suggest structures assembled piece by piece, sometimes orderly, sometimes deliberately precarious, often through chamber-like passages....
SOURCE: All About Jazz
Noel Langley: Syzygy
There has been a 12-year gap since British trumpeter, composer and producer Noel Langley released his debut as a leader, Edentide (Suntara Records, 2014). He returns with Syzygy, an album that offers a partial account of what he has been doing in the intervening years. The core of the album was recorded during a session with pianist Alcyona Mick in 2000. Having also featured on Langley's debut, Mick shares an established musical rapport with him, allowing the duo to explore ......
SOURCE: All About Jazz
Kris Davis Trio: Lost In Geneva
On Lost In Geneva, pianist Kris Davis extends the compositional and improvisational inquiry of Run The Gauntlet (Pyroclastic, 2024), deepening her interplay with bassist Robert Hurst and drummer Johnathan Blake. While the trio does not attempt to reinvent the format--bass and drums adroitly take care of business--it nonetheless subtly flexes the language. As well as tonal improvisations, the group also buys into Davis' singular writing, integrating nagging diversions and passages of minimalist patterning alongside the melodic invention and driving beat. ......
SOURCE: All About Jazz
Neil Cowley: Built on Bach
In the summer of 2023, pianist Neil Cowley wandered into Leipzig's St. Thomas Church, where Johann Sebastian Bach had spent much of his working life, and nearly stepped upon the composer's gravestone beside the altar. A fugue sounded from the organ overhead, its contrapuntal architecture suspended above the mortal remains of the imagination that had conceived it. Between these two registers of existence, Cowley experienced a sudden inundation of memory. The countless hours of childhood practice returned, bearing the mathematical ......
SOURCE: All About Jazz
Howard Levy: Heavy World
The multi-instrumentalist Howard Levy--author, educator, and master of the diatonic harmonica--has released a solo album, Heavy World, the title being an anagram of his name and perhaps a representation of his current thoughts and feelings. Yet, the music within is bright and spirited enough to lift the souls of his listeners, especially his regional fans who will be excited to receive the first recorded version of Levy's multi-genre harmonica rendition of “Amazing Grace." On Heavy World, recorded at ......
SOURCE: All About Jazz
Marty Ehrlich: Open Air: The Complete Saxophone Quartet Compositions Of Julius Hemphill
Julius Hemphill's saxophone quartets reveal a compositional imagination as resourceful as it is distinctive. In assembling all of Hemphill's known works for the format, reedman Marty Ehrlich brings a remarkable body of music into sharp focus, foregrounding the harmonic ingenuity and structural precision that can be obscured by extensive improvisation. Hemphill, best known as a founding member and principal composer of the World Saxophone Quartet (WSQ), wrote consistently for reed ensembles from 1977 until his death in 1995. ......
SOURCE: All About Jazz
Max Richter: While The Flood Rages
Among contemporary classical composers, Max Richter remains at the helm of those preoccupied with listening habits. These days attention spans are limited. What can music do to remain deeply effective? Exploring this notion made him dabble in the extremes, with an album of ringtones on 24 Postcards in Full Colour (FatCat Records, 2008) on one end of the scale and, on the other, an eight-CD/Blu-ray sonic wallpaper for our dreaming selves--2015's Sleep (Deutsche Grammophon). The two releases are polar opposites ......
SOURCE: All About Jazz