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Miles Davis: Miles '56: The Prestige Recordings
by Mike Jurkovic
Let us imagine for the moment that it is a day or two after the Big Spirit Beyond Wonder has separated the wheat from the chafe. The terrible, unwanted wars have ceased. Global climate change is no longer a threat. Autocracy is in the dustbin of history where it rightfully belongs. Illness has passed. The world, ...
Lucy Yeghiazaryan: Hey Love!
by Katchie Cartwright
The excellent New York-based singer Lucy Yeghiazaryan and her stellar band may have you thinking back to Carmen McRae in the 1950s as you listen to Hey Love!--groups with Wendell Marshall, Kenny Clarke, and other hard bop-era musicians. On her 2026 release, Yeghiazaryan has the ubiquitous Peter Washington on bass and Kenny Washington on drums, with ...
Leigh Pilzer: Keep Holding On
by Jack Bowers
There are times when the friends you make can make a world of difference. That is certainly true of baritone saxophonist Leigh Pilzer's recording, Keep Holding On, whose trio format--admirable in its own way--is considerably enriched by a quartet of friends and colleagues whose expertise helps brighten even further five of the album's 11 already-impressive numbers. ...
Wolfgang Muthspiel: ATLAS
by Tyran Grillo
There is a special kind of intimacy that can arise when a trio dispenses with the obvious rhythmic anchor of drums. In the right hands, that absence makes every gesture structurally important. On Atlas, guitarist Wolfgang Muthspiel, trumpeter Mario Rom, and pianist Colin Vallon make precisely that kind of space. Their music is chamber-like in its balance ...
Bobby Wiens: Focus
by Kyle Simpler
Even though a recording is a finished product, it still captures the feeling and intensity of the session. When players have a good working rapport, everything translates through the music. Clearly, the musicians assembled by drummer Bobby Wiens for his second album, Focus, share a strong rapport, and that chemistry is evident throughout the recording.
Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra: Ellington Masterworks
by Jack Bowers
When the topic of Duke Ellington's masterworks arises (rarely, it is true, but not implausibly so), the leading candidates usually comprise such popular standards as “Sophisticated Lady," “Mood Indigo," “Prelude to a Kiss" and “Satin Doll"--not one of which is included in the Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra's chronicle of Ellington Masterworks, recorded live in April 2024 ...
Robyn Spangler: Robyn Spangler
by C. Michael Bailey
Award-winning vocal stylist, songwriter, and actress Robyn Spangler is a fourth-generation performer whose deep musical roots trace back to an Indiana childhood of circus musicians, military band players, and a mother who sang in big bands. After taking piano lessons from former Steve Miller Band keyboardist Jim Peterman and fronting professional cover bands at age 17, ...
Nduduzo Makhathini: The Myth We Choose
by Mike Jurkovic
With the spirit winds and the sounds of Ladysmith Black Mambazo at his back, pianist/composer/shaman/philosopher Nduduzo Makhathini embarks, throughout the whole of The Myth We Choose, with an inspired, ancestral magic. Chanting, speaking, conjuring. Elegant but never stand-offish, it is the joyful music of a resilient, triumphant, spiritual people. It is the music of a people ...
Mark Turner: Patternmaster
by Sue Yang
Mark Turner has never been a saxophonist of easy declarations. His tenor rarely shouts for attention; instead, it moves through the music like a thought searching for its most exact shape. On Patternmaster, the follow-up to Return From The Stars (ECM Records, 2022), that familiar restraint remains, but the quartet sounds more road-tested, more physically alert. ...
Sean Imboden Large Ensemble: Communal Heart
by Jack Bowers
Communal Heart is the first album by saxophonist and composer Sean Imboden's superb Indiana-based Large Ensemble, recorded about a year before his second recording, Uncharted Realms (Self Produced, 2026). As before, all the compositions and arrangements are Imboden's, while the personnel in the eighteen-member orchestra remains virtually intact. If there is a difference between ...
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