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Ben Markley Big Band: Ari's Funhouse
by Jack Bowers
Ari's Funhouse, recorded in July 2021, sprang from a chance encounter at a Texas jazz festival in 2019 between New York-based drummer & composer Ari Hoenig and Denver-based pianist & arranger Ben Markley. After performing with Hoenig in a small group, Markley asked if he might score some of Hoenig's songs for a big band. Hoenig ...
Whit Dickey Quartet: Astral Long Form: Staircase In Space
by Mark Corroto
As leader of the Whit Dickey Quartet, the drummer placed total faith in his bandmates for this studio session. The accompanying materials quote Dickey, I asked them all to not think of time too much; I just wanted them to play, not to follow me or each other." Was that instruction made out of confidence or ...
Potsa Lotsa XL & Youjin Sung: Gaya
by Ian Patterson
Potsa Lotsa, the moveable feast headed by saxophonist/clarinetist Silke Eberhard, began life in 2010 as a wind quartet, debuting with The Complete Works Of Eric Dolphy (Jazzwerkstatt, 2011), an innovative tribute to the tragically short-lived multi-reedist. The quartet expanded to an octet--Potsa Lotsa Plus--for Plays Love Suite By Eric Dolphy (Jazzwekstatt, 2014), breathing new life into ...
Emma Rawicz: Incantation
by Chris May
Incantation is the debut album from British tenor saxophonist Emma Rawicz, whose playing has a degree of poise that is not often found in a teenager (she is nineteen years old) on their inaugural outing. It is not unprecedented, however, as we are reminded by the case of drummer Tony Williams, seventeen years old and brimming ...
OGJB Quartet: Ode To O
by John Sharpe
An assemblage of stars doesn't always result in a constellation. But astronomers will need to take note in the case of the OGJB Quartet, called after the forename initials of the four members: reedman Oliver Lake, cornetist Graham Haynes, bassist Joe Fonda and drummer Barry Altschul. On the venerable collective's second album Ode To O following ...
Nduduzo Makhathini: In The Spirit Of Ntu
by Chris May
There are strong links between London's alternative jazz scene and the parallel and burgeoning one in South Africa. A case in point is the connection between South African pianist Nduduzo Makhathini and British tenor saxophonist and clarinetist Shabaka Hutchings. Makhathini and Hutchings' similar ages and overlapping, cosmologically informed takes on jazz meant they were ...
Keith Oxman: This One's for Joey
by Jack Bowers
The Joey" saluted on Denver-based tenor saxophonist Keith Oxman's latest album is Joey Pearlman, a jazz bassist who died far too soon, at age twenty-four, in Febuary 2021. Joey's music and personality," Oxman writes, brightened every day for us at [Denver's] East High School. His presence brought joy to our music room...as he challenged us with ...
Naama Gheber: Old Mother Hubbard
by C. Michael Bailey
New York-based Israeli vocalist Naama Gheber released her debut Dearly Beloved (Cellar Live) two years ago this month, in April 2020, right at the front of the gaping maw, we came to know as severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 or COVID-19. In spite of this, Gheber's recording garnered favorable reviews at All About Jazz, as ...
Steve Kaldestad: Live at Frankie's Jazz Club
by Jack Bowers
On his fourth album for Cellar Music, western Canada-based tenor saxophonist Steve Kaldestad plays Con Alma." He also plays con alma--in English, with soul"not only on Dizzy Gillespie's paean to human life's animating principle but throughout a more than hour-long concert at Frankie's Jazz Club in Vancouver, wherein he leads an exemplary quartet whose members are ...
Ariane Racicot: Envolée
by Dan McClenaghan
Pianos pop up in odd places--airports, shopping malls, and Quebec's Mount Royal Park, where pianist Ariane Racicot strode up to a lonely upright, sat down and presented an unsuspecting crowd to a killer version of Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody." This performance then popped up on YouTube, where it has garnered 18 million views. Racicot was ...

