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Paul Dietrich: 5+4
by Jack Bowers
The concept for this latest album by Wisconsin-based trumpeter, composer and educator Paul Dietrich, his fourth as leader, can be found in its title, 5+4, wherein he employs a jazz quintet and four-member string section. It is to Dietrich's credit that neither one outshines the other; the quintet takes the lead on six of the album's ...
Greg Byers: Dear Zbigniew
by Ian Patterson
Half a decade in the making, Dear Zbigniew is multi-string instrumentalist Greg Byers' musical letter to Zbigniew Seifert, the Polish violinist who made his name in Tomasz Stanko's quintet in the late '60s/early '70s. Byers' appreciation of Seifert--dubbed the John Coltrane of the violin--came with his participation in the 2018 and 2020 editions of the Zbigniew ...
Charles Mingus: At Antibes 1960 Revisited
by Chris May
Charles Mingus' exhilarating blend of roots and the avant-garde only rarely seems as binary* (see below) as it does on this recording from the 1960 Antibes Jazz Festival. Most often on a Mingus album, you do not hear the joins. This time, on one level, you do. Mingus leads a pianoless quintet completed by ...
Precarious Towers: Ten Stories
by Jack Bowers
Precarious Towers is a Midwestern-based quintet whose second recording, Ten Stories, is as bare-bones an album as one could imagine: a plain CD (without name or artwork) resting in a pale-blue jacket (no tray or protective sleeve) that includes a list of songs, composers and personnel plus recording details. That's it. From a reviewer's point of ...
Benjamin Boone: Caught in the Rhythm
by Paul Rauch
The connection between poetry and jazz music is a delicate one. It has been documented so infrequently, in performance and recordings, that one still conjures the flicker of an image of Jack Kerouac reading in some dark Greenwich Village cafe with Steve Allen or Zoot Sims, surrounded by beret-wearing, cappuccino-sipping beatniks. The work of Fresno-based saxophonist ...
John La Barbera Big Band: Grooveyard
by Jack Bowers
Composer/arranger John La Barbera has been at the top of his game for more than half a century, and Grooveyard is simply another example of his undiminished artistry. Besides arranging everything--superbly, as always--La Barbera wrote six of the session's ten charming songs, escorting other treasures by Carl Perkins, Dave Brubeck, Curtis Fuller and Elvin Jones.
Hilario Duran: Cry Me A River
by Pierre Giroux
Hilario Durán is a renowned Cuban-Canadian jazz pianist and composer known for contributing to Latin jazz. He does not release big band efforts often, but with the release of Cry Me A River, he has reconstituted his Latin Jazz Big Band to take us on an extraordinary musical journey, effortlessly blending myriad genres into his singular ...
Matt Mitchell: Oblong Aplomb
by John Sharpe
On Oblong Aplomb pianist Matt Mitchell pays homage to the drummers in his life. In a way, it can be seen as a follow-up to his debut Fiction (Pi Recordings, 2013). That album, a duet with stickman Ches Smith, originated from Mitchell's practice of warming up for gigs with Tim Berne's Snakeoil by running through a ...
Electroscope Trio: Electroscope
by Neri Pollastri
Registrato in due diverse sessioni, la prima nel novembre del 2018 (gli iniziali otto brani, tutti piuttosto brevi), la seconda nel giugno dell'anno successivo (le due tracce conclusive, entrambe attorno agli otto minuti), Electroscope è un disco d'improvvisazione nel quale i flauti di Massimo De Mattia si stagliano nitidi ed espressivi su un variegato tappeto sonoro ...
Henry Spencer: The Defector
by Neil Duggan
In 2011, trumpeter Henry Spencer won the Best Newcomer Award at the jazz festival in the Wiltshire town of Marlborough; he went on to win the Emerging Excellence Award from Help Musicians UK in 2014. Sometimes these awards add extra pressure or, as is the case here, propel the musician to new heights. He climbs very ...
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