Home » Search Center » Results: Album Review
Results for "Album Review"
Day and Taxi: Live in Baden
by John Sharpe
With only seven releases over its 30 plus year history, the Swiss band Day & Taxi, led by saxophonist and composer Christoph Gallio, is not exactly over documented. That is a shame as it has been a consistently stimulating outfit which takes an expansive view of the free jazz tradition. Gallio has been the only constant ...
Michael Formanek Elusion Quartet: As Things Do
by Troy Dostert
The Elusion Quartet has become one of bassist Michael Formanek's more formidable ensembles, even if it is a more recent project than his long- standing work with Tomas Fujiwara and Mary Halvorson in Thumbscrew, or the many recordings he has made with prominent saxophonists ranging from Tim Berne to Marty Ehrlich and Ellery Eskelin. Although As ...
Bo van de Graaf: Shinjuku
by Karl Ackermann
Saxophonist and composer Bo van de Graaf is not well known outside Western Europe despite being one of the most interesting and creative figures in music. His Dutch ensemble, I Compani, has been active for almost forty years. Van De Graaf composes original scores based on classic films of Fellini, Bertolucci, Greta Garbo, and others. He ...
Matt Barber: The Song Is You
by Jack Bowers
Matt Barber is a pretty good singer: pleasant voice, decent range, fair sense of swing, healthy respect for a lyric. On his seventh album, The Song Is You, Barber has chosen to revisit a number of evergreens from the Great American Songbook and placed himself in a variety of musical settings designed to enhance the experience. ...
Jochen Rueckert: With Best Intentions
by Dan Bilawsky
This stellar sixth album from Jochen Rueckert extends on some musical friendships while offering a fresh format and new palette. Having previously delivered his notable Introduction (Lipstick-Jazzline, 1998) some 25 years ago, greased the grooves on an appealing organ trio session with guests, and drawn notice with guitar-driven gusto on several quartet dates, this German-born, New ...
Asher Gamedze: Turbulence And Pulse
by Chris May
South African drummer Asher Gamedze's Turbulence And Pulse is a magnificent, gutsy, stirring piece of work, authentic to its core. It resonates, almost without mediation, with Black American jazz as played by bands led by Charles Mingus and Art Blakey circa 1960. And therein lies a story, for Black South African jazz has seen its compass ...
Jason Keiser: Shaw's Groove
by Jack Bowers
The Shaw" in guitarist Jason Keiser's album Shaw's Groove is the late great Woody Shaw, one of the more innovative and influential jazz trumpeters of the twentieth century. Even though he lived only forty-four years (he died in May 1989), Shaw was an important role model whose sweeping influence remains strong to this day, both as ...
The Flame: Towards The Flame Vol 1
by Mike Jurkovic
Three of Europe's most acclimated and proven improvisers--pianist Robert Mitchell (Steve Coleman, Greg Osby), bassist Neil Charles, and drummer/percussionist Mark Sanders (Jah Wobble, Rachel Musson)--band together as The Flame for the first time and emerge from pandemic isolation, and the forever wars and broken civics that accompanied it, with a hypnotic performance captured absolutely live on ...
Anders Lønne Grønseth & Multiverse: Inner View
by Chris May
Since George Russell published his influential Lydian Chromatic Concept Of Tonal Organization in 1953, other jazz musicians have attempted to reforge the theoretical construct of their music--with varying degrees of success and including some egregiously posturing examples of b.s. which bring to mind Hans Christian Andersen's salutary story The Emperor's New Clothes. One ...
Patrick Brennan Sonic Openings: Tilting Curvaceous
by Karl Ackermann
The quintet project Tilting Curvaceous is saxophonist/composer Patrick Brennan's sixth leader/co-leader date since the late 1990s. His duo recording Terraphonia (Creative Sources Recordings, 2019) with guitarist Abdul Moimême demonstrated a strong affinity for free improvisation within unconventional settings and uncommon concepts. Brennan is joined by trumpeter and flugelhorn player Brian Groder. The native New Yorker has ...


