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Basie All Stars: Live At Fabrik Vol. 1
by Chris May
Such are the glories of his band's recorded legacy from the 1930s through the 1950s, that the mere mention of Count Basie's name will trigger a Pavlovian response from his fan base. Like no other, the Count Basie Orchestra epitomised big-band swing at its most sublime; reefer fuelled, riff based, loose and louche Kansas City jazz ...
Wadada Leo Smith: Fire Illuminations
by Dan McClenaghan
Trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith fronts lots of different bands and puts out lots of albums. After a busy period when he released five boxed sets, totaling 27 CDs, here he debuts his new all-star ensemble Orange Wave Electric, with the download-only offering, Fire Illuminations. As the band name implies, the sound is electric, featuring three electric ...
Mary Foster Conklin: These Precious Days
by Pierre Giroux
Mary Foster Conklin is a New York-based singer with an eclectic approach to the choices she makes in deciding upon a repetoire for her fifth release, These Precious Days. Unafraid to step outside the nine dots, she has focussed the project on lesser-known jazz and popular compositions by predominately female songwriters. Joining Conklin are a number ...
Don Aliquo: Growth
by Jack Bowers
On Growth, his eighth album as a leader, it is said that Nashville-based saxophonist Don Aliquo pushes past his established comfort zone and into more precarious and challenging improvisational territory." While that may well be true, another truism is that the harmonic vocabulary of contemporary jazz has remained essentially unchanged for more than eight decades, and ...
Danil Zverkhanovsky: Work In Progress
by Hrayr Attarian
Berlin-based, Ukrainian guitarist Danil Zverkhanovsky released his second album as a leader, the captivating Work In Progress in piecemeal fashion over three EPs. Thematically, however, the three parts are unified, showcasing Zverkhanvosky's prodigious talent as a composer and performer. The earliest tunes were written in 2011 when he was only 17 and the latest ones are ...
Kendrick Scott: Corridors
by Mike Jurkovic
Drummer Kendrick Scott's A Wall Becomes A Bridge (Blue Note, 2019) was everything to everybody and then some. Optimistic yet well aware of the roiling contradictions beneath it all, the formidable Corridors, its revivalist tenor intact, carries on that spirit of interplay and common alliance. Breaking from the start with the loping, street-smart, stride ...
Pharoah Sanders Quartet: Live At Fabrik
by Chris May
One reason Pharoah Sanders was such a special artist was the prismatic nature of his music. When Sanders lit on to a new avenue of investigation, he did not in the process reject what he had been doing up until that moment. Instead, he wove the new perspective into the existing structure, enriching rather than replacing ...
Jason Rebello & Tim Garland: Life to Life
by Neil Duggan
Finally! After over three decades of friendship and occasional musical collaboration, two of the UK's most respected jazz musicians, pianist Jason Rebello and saxophonist Tim Garland, have finally recorded an album together purely as a duo. Their assurance and instinctive musicianship make this album a real standout. Both share a background from London's Guildhall School of ...
David Ecker: Respite (Despite)
by Dan McClenaghan
The Covid pandemic has been educational. One of its lessons is (to paraphrase a famous movie): music finds a way. If getting together in the studio is a problem, then grab the technology and go the remote recording route. It worked for guitarist Justin Morell and drummer Mark Ferber on 2022's Exit Music For Intelligent Life ...
Eldad Tarmu: Tarmu Jazz Quartet
by Jack Bowers
The vibraphone is not often heard on the jazz scene these days, which makes this new album by the Tarmu Jazz Quartet even more welcome than it might have been at a time when Red Norvo, Lionel Hampton, Terry Gibbs, Milt Jackson, Cal Tjader, Gary Burton, Bobby Hutcherson, Gary McFarland and their ilk were riding high. ...


