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Rhiannon Giddens: You're The One
by Katchie Cartwright
Rhiannon Giddens has a voracious musical appetite and a big talent that uses everything to fuel her many creative activities. With a MacArthur, a Pulitzer, and multiple Grammys on her shelf, this has not gone unnoticed. In a body of work that includes musicological projects along with different types of art, You're The One focuses on ...
Mark Lewandowski: A Bouquet (for Lady Day)
by Ian Patterson
A regular in the Mingus Big Band and Wynton Marsalis' quartet, New York-based Mark Lewandowski has won numerous awards for his sonorous double bass playing, which can be appreciated in settings as diverse as John Zorn's The Book of Beri'ah (Tzadik Records, 2018) and Joe Chamber's Dance Kobina (Blue Note Records, 2022). As a leader, Lewandowski ...
Javier Nero Jazz Orchestra: Kemet (The Black Land)
by Jack Bowers
On Kemet (The Black Land), trombonist/composer Javier Nero pays homage to a highly advanced African civilization that flourished before the Egyptian kingdom was established and thousands of years before the Greek and Roman empires that are hailed today as the pillars of modern/western culture. Even though Kemet is all but forgotten in 2023, Nero (whose name ...
Kaidi Tatham: The Only Way
by Chris May
The Belfast-based DJ and broken-beat pioneer Kaidi Tatham travels a parallel orbit to that of the London-based DJ Ash Walker. Both are loosely associated with Britain's alternative jazz scene. Both draw on a similar patchwork of influences, including hip hop, rap, techno, old school jazz-funk and modern Brazilian dance music. Both approach the recording studio as ...
Matt Otto: Umbra
by Dan McClenaghan
This music--nine Matt Otto originals--has the feeling of shadowy sounds. Shapes without defined borders emerge. On the opener, Little Things," the core trio--the leader plus bassist Jeff Harshbarger and drummer John Kizilarmut--are joined by Fender Rhodes player Matt Villinger and guitarist Alex Frank. The electronic resonance gives the sound an alluring and shadowy blur, as does ...
Gordon Lee: How Can It Be?
by Jack Bowers
Oregon-based pianist Gordon Lee leads a trim quartet through its paces on his seventh album, How Can It Be?, written for the most part during the Covid pandemic and recorded shortly afterward, in October 2022. Before recording, Lee had worked often with tenor saxophonist Renato Caranto and bassist Dennis Caiazza. Drummer Gary Hobbs, ...
Audible Spirits: Audible Spirits
by Mark Corroto
Audible Spirits is not your father's or for that matter your grandmother's book of standards. Vibraphonist Matt Moran, trombonist Curtis Hasselbring, and vocalist Sarah Elizabeth Charles reinvent, reinterpret, and definitely reimagine eight classic jazz compositions. For a living jazz musician of any age, there is a book of songs that is de rigueur in jazz education. ...
Wilma Baan: Look At Me Now!
by Neil Duggan
Originally from The Netherlands and now settled in the UK, vocalist Wilma Baan's story is one of perseverance. Mid-way through her singing career in the '80s, she was diagnosed with a condition that meant gradually worsening hearing loss. Although she could still hear high tones, she had little choice but to pause her career. Fortunately, in ...
Alex Coke & Carl Michel Sextet: Emergence
by Jack Bowers
Emergence, the latest album by the Texas-based Alex Coke & Carl Michel Sextet, is by and large chamber jazz, veering often into the realms of avant-garde and free improvisation. The standard of musicianship is high, the urge to listen a second time rather less so--an opinion that must be qualified by the admission that it expresses ...
Roots Magic Sextet: Long Old Road
by Mark Corroto
The poet Jayne Cortez once wrote I'm taking the blues back to where / the blues stealers won't go / I'm talking the blues back home." For Roots Magic, back home isn't the crossroads where Robert Johnson made that infamous deal with the devil, but the peninsula in Southern Europe we call Italy. Long Old Road ...


