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Brad Mehldau: Your Mother Should Know: Brad Mehldau Plays The Beatles
by Mike Jurkovic
In the press release and liner notes, Brad Mehldau, a spiritual man who delves deeply into subjects that matter to him, talks a lot about the Fab Four's continued universality and to the strangeness of their originality and our assimilation of it. But he never really gets to the point as clearly, personally and succinctly as ...
Christopher Burnett: The Standards, Vol. 2 (Live at The Drum Room in Kansas City)
by Kyle Simpler
During its heyday, The Drum Room in The Hotel President was one of Kansas City's most popular jazz venues. Performers such as Duke Ellington, Frank Sinatra, and Benny Goodman all played there. The Drum Room closed during the late seventies but was brought back to life a few years later and, between 2006 and 2007, The ...
Chris Potter: Got The Keys To The Kingdom (Live At The Village Vanguard)
by Chris May
There is a lot of heavy ordnance going off during this album. Indeed, the incoming only lets up once, and then briefly, during a performance of Billy Strayhorn's Blood Count" at the halfway point. For the rest of the sixty-one minutes playing time, the watchword is eruptive. But no PPE is required. The barrage is benign. ...
Fred Hersch & Esperanza Spalding: Alive at the Village Vanguard
by John Chacona
Is it possible that we underestimate Esperanza Spalding? That would be quite a trick for an artist who has hardly been out of the spotlight since leapfrogging a couple of nobodies named Drake and Justin Bieber to take the Grammy award for Best New Artist in 2011. With a recent resume that includes a high-profile teaching ...
Izumi Kimura & Cora Venus Lunny: Invisible Resistances
by Ian Patterson
Take two of contemporary music's most versatile improvising musicians, give them free reign to play and something of real worth is likely to arise. That is the philosophy of Farpoint Recordings, an Irish label founded by Anthony Kelly and David Stalling in 2004. Their trust in pianist Izumi Kimura and violinist/viola player Cora Venus Lunny is ...
Rodney Whitaker: Oasis: The Music of Gregg Hill
by Jack Bowers
Oasis is the third time around for bassist Rodney Whitaker and music written by fellow Michigander Gregg Hill, following Common Ground (Origin 82780) and Outrospection (Origin 82819). Personnel is the same as on Common Ground (Terell Stafford, trumpet; Tim Warfield, saxophone; Bruce Barth, piano; Dana Hall, drums; Rockelle Fortin, vocals) with Hall and Fortin returning from ...
Eric Goletz: Standard-ized!
by Jack Bowers
If variety is on your wish list, you will find a lot to like on Standard-ized!, New York-based trombonist Eric Goletz's third album in three years. Group size and makeup are seldom the same, Goletz's charts traverse new realms, there are special guests to enhance the proceedings, and Goletz even enlists a six-piece string orchestra" on ...
Eli Wallace: Pieces & Interludes
by Karl Ackermann
At his most experimental, pianist & composer Eli Wallace has sufficient preparations to obscure almost all the natural sounds of the piano. That has often been the case across a portfolio of half-a-dozen leader or co-leader releases, but Wallace's solo album Pieces & Interludes is a singular enigma. The California native, now Brooklyn-based, Wallace ...
Thomas K.J. Meyer: Uneven Same – Saxophone Quartets 1 2 5 6 7
by Alberto Bazzurro
Composti fra il 1990 e il 2021 e incisi nel novembre di quello stesso anno, questi quartetti per soli sassofoni (di cui uno, il No. 6, registrato nel 2010 dal solo autore su quattro piste di sax contrabbasso, di cui è specialista) illustrano l'attività di scrittura nel ramo specifico del sessantunenne sassofonista svizzero Thomas K.J. Meyer, ...
Jim Snidero: Far Far Away
by Dan McClenaghan
Alto saxophonist Jim Snidero had quite a year in 2021, with the re-release of his masterpiece, Strings (Savant), originally released in 2001, and the release of another masterful set, Live At Deer Head Inn (Savant). In 2022 he decided to keep a good thing going, inviting his Deer Head rhythm section--pianist Orrin Evans, bassist Peter Washington, ...


