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Benjamin Lackner: Last Decade
by Dan McClenaghan
In a 2006 interview for All About Jazz written by Joao Moriera dos Santos, pianist/keyboardist Benjamin Lackner was asked: What label would you like to be on in the near future?" He said, simply, ECM." That seemed ambitious for Lackner at that stage of his career. He was 29 years old at the time and boasted ...
Ivo Perelman / Matthew Shipp: Fruition
by Mark Corroto
After 26 years years of recording in duo together, is it possible now to decode the music of Ivo Perelman and Matthew Shipp? The word decode" is used here because their efforts, nearly all freely improvised, are a musical language the two musicians have created themselves. Like the Steve Lacy/Mal Waldron duos, their sound together is ...
Ian Wardenski: Trust
by Geannine Reid
Ian Wardenski's Quintet returns with a follow-up to Collective Thoughts (IW, 2019). The innovative bandleader and guitarist continues to create a sound that combines the aesthetics of a chamber group with the freedom, spontaneity and improvisation of a small jazz combo. Trust features Mercedes Beckman on alto saxophone, Jerry Ascione, piano, Amy Shook, bass, Frank Russo, ...
Collin Sherman: Organism Made Luminous
by Dan McClenaghan
The Covid pandemic slowed artistic progress for many musicians. Opportunities to collaborate became scarce; live music in front of an audience blinked out. However, the enterprising players out there found a way. File sharing and solo projects blossomed, and thesealong with the relative affordability of home studio set upshad an invigorating effect on musical creativity. If ...
Eddie Prévost: Collider – or, ‘whose drum is it, anyway?’
by John Eyles
The festivities that accompanied drummer Eddie Prévost's eightieth birthday in 2022 (including four Saturday night concerts at London's Café Oto, each celebrating a different facet of his career) served to highlight the breadth and depth of his activities and talents, and to open some audience members' eyes to previously undiscovered aspects of him. Prévost's highest profile ...
The Andy Ostwald Trio: A Field Guide
by Eve Goldberg
Field Guide (Digital Victrola, 2022) is the impressive debut album by the Andy Ostwald Trio. The album consists of inspired interpretations of tunes spanning five decades. From Jimmy Van Heusen to Wayne Shorter, Keith Jarrett to Abdullah Ibrahim, we are treated to a variety of jazz styles, adapted for piano, bass, and drums. Plus one original ...
Chad Fowler: Alien Skin
by Mark Corroto
Freely improvised music, saxophonist Paul Flaherty dubbed it the hated music." Experiencing Alien Skin brings to mind another quote, this one from a shampoo commercial from the late 1980s: Don't hate me because I'm beautiful." A beautiful alchemy is this session captured in the fall of 2021. It contains a three-horn front line of Chad Fowler, ...
Charles Stepney: Step By Step
by Chris May
Chicago born, bred and buttered, the composer, arranger and producer Charles Stepney (1931-76) lived and worked on the porous boundary between jazz and funk which has existed since James Brown first got on the good foot. As a staff producer for the Chess label in the 1960s, and later as an independent, Stepney worked on recordings ...
Roberta Donnay: Blossom-ing!
by Jack Bowers
Blossom-ing! is vocalist Roberta Donnay's tribute to one of the most memorable jazz singers who ever lived, Blossom Dearie. She does so via sixteen songs associated with Dearie including Billie Holiday's Billie's (or Blossom's) Blues," retitled here Roberta's Blues." After leading with that one, Donnay lends her tremulous little-girl voice (eerily similar to Dearie's) to one ...
Sun Ra Arkestra directed by Marshall Allen: Living Sky
by Mark Corroto
In 2022, Sun Ra has been gone nearly thirty years, but thanks to maestro Marshall Allen his Arkestra has survived. Allen had been a member of Sun Ra's band since the late 1950s and it has been under Allen's leadership since 1995. Fans that have enjoyed the Arkestra in concert certainly hoped for the band to ...

