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Travis Reuter: Quintet Music
by Glenn Astarita
Released as the long-anticipated encore to his avant-garde debut, Rotational Templates (New Focus, 2011), Travis Reuter's Quintet Music is a masterpiece of musical sorcery, brimming with bold invention and innovative creativity. Reuter, a maverick guitarist who is unafraid to color outside the lines, leads his band of equally audacious virtuosos through a sonic wonderland that most ...
Phillip Greenlief and Jon Raskin: 2 + 2 with Shoko Hikage and Kanoko Nishi
by Hrayr Attarian
In the third decade of the 21st century saxophonists Jon Raskin and Phillip Greenlief have been slowly releasing albums from their 2+2 series. These are sessions, both improvised and using Raskin's graphic scores, which match Raskin and Greenlief with two other musicians who play the same instrument.. The second installment, the captivating 2+2 with Shoko Hikage ...
Zara McFarlane: Sweet Whispers: Celebrating Sarah Vaughan
by Chris May
Zara McFarlane's fifth album--a recording that actually fits the vogueish description “project"--represents a marked change of focus for the singer, from London to New York City and points west. Closely associated with London's radical underground jazz scene, McFarlane has previously peopled her touring and recording bands with fellow adventurers such Shabaka Hutchings, Shirley Tetteh, Idris Rahman, ...
Jon Gordon: 7th Ave South
by Pierre Giroux
Jon Gordon, an alto and soprano saxophonist, steps into the limelight with his latest release 7th Ave South, a melodic memoir of a transformative place for jazz history in the early 1980s. This journey is a testament to the fascination of discovery and the allure of artistic camaraderie four decades later. In this ten-track outing of ...
Johanna Burnheart: Bär
by Chris May
German-born London-based violinist, singer and composer Johanna Burnheart made a big impact fast on the Britain's underground jazz scene. After graduating from Guildhall School of Music & Drama in 2018, and before the pandemic shut things down, she played on three significant albums: spiritual-jazz band Maisha's There Is A Place (Brownswood, 2018), trombonist Rosie Turton's 5ive ...
Joanne Shaw Taylor: Heavy Soul
by Doug Collette
Since guitarist/vocalist/songwriter Joanne Shaw Taylor effectively recapitulated her roots on Blues From the Heart Live (Keeping The Blues Alive, 2022) she has earnestly endeavored to expand her style. In no short order later that same year, a more pop-oriented and highly-polished studio outing arrived in the form of Nobody's Fool (Keeping The Blues Alive, 2022), thereby ...
The Messthetics: The Messthetics And James Brandon Lewis
by Chris May
There are few examples of ranking jazz saxophonists collaborating with rock bands, and even fewer that are as successful as this one featuring tenor saxophonist James Brandon Lewis and the instrumental trio The Messthetics. One notable precedent is the partnership of Ethiopian tenor saxophonist Getatchew Mekurya with Dutch punk band The Ex, which exploded into life ...
Hendrik Meurkens: The Jazz Meurkengers
by Edward Blanco
When one thinks of the jazz harmonica, two names immediately come to mind, the late great Toots Thielemans and the incomparable Hendrik Meurkens whose new project The Jazz Meurkengers fully captures Meurkens' desire to produce a new and exciting swinging jazz album. While Meurkens learned to play the vibraphone first at the age of sixteen growing ...
Natsuki Tamura & Jim Black: NatJim
by Glenn Astarita
Few albums capture the sheer joy of music-making as vividly as NatJim, the first duo recording from trumpeter-composer Natsuki Tamura and drummer Jim Black in over a quarter century. This avant-garde jazz session is a spirited reunion, highlighting their exceptional synergy and limitless creativity. The artists have previously collaborated on two albums led by eminent pianist-composer ...
One for All: Big George
by Joshua Weiner
Smoke Sessions Records, based out of NYC's Smoke Jazz Club, has a fascinating recording model: artists play a few nights at the club, take a day off, and then go into a studio such as the famous Sear Sound to record their repertoire for release. They been putting out some excellent material, the latest of which ...
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