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Antonio Adolfo: Carnaval - The Songs Were So Beautiful
by Pierre Giroux
Veteran pianist, composer, and arranger Antonio Adolfo has long been a master at capturing the essence of Brazilian music through a jazz perspective. On Carnaval (The Songs Were So Beautiful), Adolfo draws on a wide range of traditional Brazilian carnival styles-- sambas, marchinas, marchas-rancho, and frevos--to create a vibrant and richly textured album that bursts with ...
Saihs: Distopìa
by Neil Duggan
Distopia is the debut album from Italian sextet Saihs, formed in Florence, Tuscany, in 2023. Although each track is credited to a single composer, the process of shaping each piece was the result of two years of intensive rehearsal sessions at the Scuola di Musica in Campi Bisenzio, under the guiding hand of director Massimo Barsotti. ...
The Brighton Beat: Victory At Last
by Mike Jurkovic
For the musically uninitiated and socially marooned, there is a perpetual sense of danceable immediacy to the big, fun Brighton Beat sound. The exact reason for that is that, at any moment--no, make that every moment--there is the potential to shake-your-money-maker around the moon and back again. Measure by measure by measure, the dance floor is ...
Igor Willcox Quartet: Time Traveller
by Joshua Weiner
Brazilian drummer Igor Willcox is the descendant of a multi-generational family of musicians, with a conductor-arranger father and vocalist mother. With Swiss phenom Jojo Mayer as a teacher and three decades of performing under his belt, it is perhaps not surprising that Willcox's playing is superb. What astonishes on the Igor Willcox Quartet's fusion album Time ...
Mike Freeman's ZonaVibe: Circles In A Yellow Room
by Jack Bowers
Circles in a Yellow Room, New York-based vibraphonist Mike Freeman's eighth recording as leader of his own ensembles, has a Latin flavor reminiscent of classic albums by West Coast maestro Cal Tjader. Stylistically, Freeman parallels Tjader and a host of others from Milt Jackson, Terry Gibbs and Gary McFarland to Bobby Hutcherson, Gary Burton, Joe Locke ...
Jake Baldwin: Vanishing Point
by Troy Dostert
Trumpeter Jake Baldwin has been an important presence in the Minneapolis jazz scene since the early 2010s, known especially for a stylistic breadth that can cover the gamut from conventional post-bop fare to rock-inflected fusion. On Vanishing Point, his fourth release for Shifting Paradigm Records, he digs deeper into the latter mode, making good use of ...
Miguel Ângelo Trio: Distopia
by Andrew Hunter
Portuguese double-bassist Miguel Ângelo is a busy guy. He leads a quartet, with which he has released three records, as well as the trio he appears with here. He is also a member of several other small groups and has, fairly uniquely, released a record of solo double bass--the splendidly titled I Think I'm Going To ...
Ivo Perelman: Armageddon Flower
by John Sharpe
Pianist Matthew Shipp serves as the fulcrum of Armageddon Flower, a riveting quartet date that unites two longstanding units: the duo with tenor saxophonist Ivo Perelman, and his String Trio with violist Mat Maneri and bassist William Parker. However, no-one is confined by past roles. Each of these four players has collaborated in multiple configurations over ...
Kaisa Mäensivu: Moving Parts
by Vincenzo Roggero
Di origine finlandese, da tempo residente a New York, la contrabbassista e compositrice Kaisa Maensivu fonda l'ensemble denominato Kaisa's Machine nel 2015 e, dopo l'album di esordio nel lontano 2017, approda alla prestigiosa Greenleaf di Dave Douglas nel 2023 con Taking Shape ed ora con il recentissimo Moving Parts. Nel corso degli anni e ...
Fabia Mantwill Orchestra: In.Sight
by Neil Duggan
Slow, haunting strings usher listeners into Fabia Mantwill Orchestra's ambitious album In.Sight. This bold statement involves a 32-piece orchestra with six virtuoso soloists, performing compositions co-written by Mantwill, Snarky Puppy's Michael League and Greek composer Magdalini Giannikou. The album opens with “Satoyama," where those melancholic strings gradually bloom into bright melodic passages. The piece ...
