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John Yao and His 17 Piece Instrument: Points In Time
by Jack Bowers
The insuperable spirit of swinging big-band jazz is everywhere apparent on Points in Time, the seventh recording by New York-based composer, arranger and trombonist John Yao, and the second with his marvelous 17-Piece Instrument, a decade after its well-received debut, Flip-Flop. (See Tao, 2015). As on that earlier album, the playlist consists of ...
Orrin Evans and the Captain Black Big Band: Walk A Mile In My Shoe
by Steve Plever
A glance through the track list--with covers of Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye and two swing-era vocal standards--could give you the wrong impression. Yes, this is a very accessible and soulful album, but it is serious and heartfelt jazz, with Orrin Evans' personal stamp making it work. Blues, soul and gospel sounds share the stage here ...
Pellegrini Quartet: Luigi Nono, Ludwig van Beethoven - First Visit
by Alberto Bazzurro
Abbinare un quartetto di Beethoven, composto a cavallo fra il 1824 e il 1825, a una delle pagine per archi più emblematiche della contemporaneità come Fragmente--Stille, an Diotima di Luigi Nono, scritta oltre un secolo e mezzo dopo (1979/80), potrebbe senz'altro rappresentare un discreto azzardo, che in realtà l'ensemble capitanato da Antonio Pellegrini affronta con assoluta ...
Satoko Fujii Quartet: Dog Days Of Summer
by Vincenzo Roggero
Satoko Fujii e il suo quartetto non hanno certo bisogno di presentazione. Presenza imprescindibile negli ultimi quarant'anni di musica creativa, ma si potrebbe dire di musica tout court, musicista dalla produzione discografica inesauribile--ha pubblicato come leader o co-leader più di cento dischi --la pianista, compositrice, band leader giapponese ripropone il format del quartetto che nel 2001, ...
Amina Claudine Myers: Solace of the Mind
by Troy Dostert
One of the under-heralded legends of the jazz avant-garde, keyboardist Amina Claudine Myers is finally getting her due. An early member of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) in the mid-1960s, her efforts were sometimes overshadowed by outsized colleagues such as Muhal Richard Abrams, Lester Bowie, or Henry Threadgill. But recent years have ...
Andrew Moreno: Axiom
by Nenad Georgievski
When a debut album arrives with the emotional weight and conceptual depth of Axiom, it is hard not to pay attention. Venezuelan guitarist and composer Andrew Moreno does not just introduce himself with this record--he tells his story, lays out his map of memories and migrations, and opens up a sound world both deeply personal and ...
Alexander Hawkins: Song Unconditional
by John Sharpe
Where on the first solo outing by British pianist Alexander Hawkins, Song Singular (Babel, 2014), his influences strode in plain sight, and the second, Iron Into Wind (Intakt, 2019), in its austerity, nodded toward Hawkins' classical schooling, Song Unconditional feels simultaneously more personal and more welcoming. It finds Hawkins not only consolidating the vocabulary of his ...
Jimmy Farace: Hours Fly, Flowers Die
by Jerome Wilson
There have been many recordings of saxophones backed by string sections since Charlie Parker experimented with the idea many years ago. The majority of those have featured tenor or alto sax players. However, on his debut album, Jimmy Farace demonstrates how the baritone sax can excel beautifully in this format. The full instrumental lineup ...
l'Oumigmag: Ce Qui Tourne Dans L'Air
by David Bruggink
"Oumigmag" means “muskox" in Inuktitut, one of the principal Inuit languages spoken in Canada's northeast and central northern provinces. Sébastien Sauvageau, a multi-instrumentalist and composer based in Québec, drew on his province's musical and Indigenous histories to create the jazz-folk project l'Oumigmag--an effort, he writes, to explore “how past elements (traditional music), present experiences, and future ...
Pat Petrillo: Contemporaneous
by Jack Bowers
Funk, fusion, blues and soul are the order of the day on drummer Pat Petrillo's recording, Contemporaneous, wherein he leads groups of various sizes, from septet to nonet, through their scrupulously designed paces and even plays every instrument (well, basically drums and percussion) on the album's anomalous title track (complete with “contemporaneous" voice-overs). ...
