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Markos Chaidemenos: McModal
by Phillip Woolever
The Greek pianist Markos Chaidemenos has released a wonderfully uplifting tribute to the late McCoy Tyner with this track, in anticipation of a full-length album. The song was recorded live in Athens at The Zoo. It has a feel of focused spontaneity that dances through the ear and bears repeated listening very well, capturing ...
Abraham Inc.: Together We Stand
by Chris M. Slawecki
"Ever since I formed Klezmer Madness! in the mid 1990's I've been exploring the possibilities of adding funk, jazz, and lately hip-hop influences to klezmer," explains David Krakauer, an expert clarinet voice in jazz, klezmer and classical music. So, when Krakauer learned during a 2005 tour with pianist, accordionist, singer, rapper, composer and producer Josh Socalled" ...
Gary Bartz and Maisha: Night Dreamer Direct-To-Disc Sessions
by Emmanuel Di Tommaso
La storia della collaborazione fra il leggendario Gary Bartz e il collettivo di spiritual jazz Maisha risale al 2019, quando il DJ e produttore Gilles Peterson invitò il veterano del sax contralto a suonare al We Out Here Festival di Londra supportato dal collettivo fondato dal batterista Jake Long. Quella prima esibizione andò così bene che ...
Kadi Vija Key Project: Roaming in the Contemporary Society to Make Peace With It
by Troy Dostert
Although her album's title is a bit unwieldy, vocalist Kadi Vija's summer 2020 release does convey the artist's distinctive approach to living in challenging times. Rather than aiming for dramatic gestures or the boldest imaginable change, perhaps the more sensible strategy is simply to figure out how to keep goingnot resignation, exactly, but a willingness to ...
Dave Pietro: Hypersphere
by Paul Rauch
You may not know the name Dave Pietro offhand, but it is likely, if you are a jazz fan of any sort, that you have heard him play. As a saxophone/woodwind artist, composer, educator, sideman, and bandleader, he has performed across a broad spectrum of projects since his becoming a mainstay on the New York scene ...
Suura: Luwte
by Mark Sullivan
Suura is a Belgian band (Ghent based) formed by guitarist Nicolas Van Belle. Joined by double bassist Emanuel Van Mieghem, tenor saxophonist Reindert Spanhove and alto saxophonist Werend Van Den Bossche, they are an acoustic, chamber jazz quartet (no drums). Like other contemporary Belgian improvisational musicas documented by record labels like El Negocito Records and Aspen ...
Pericopes+1: Up
by Geno Thackara
For a recording titled Up, this one sure spends a lot of time going sideways. Cue the opening track and you're carried away on waves of briskly-flowing piano and saxophone as if there isn't a thing in the world to worry about. The feel becomes a bit more angular with the next, the drums leaning somewhat ...
Third Sound: Heard in Havana
by Chris M. Slawecki
In July 2015, the US and Cuba re-established formal diplomatic relationships with the joint opening of their respective embassies in Havana and Washington, DC. The following November, the American Composers Forum sent ten composers and the instrumental ensemble Third Sound to perform a program of contemporary American music at the 28th Havana Contemporary Music Festival. Heard ...
Dave Liebman: Earth
by Chris M. Slawecki
When saxophonist, composer, and bandleader Dave Liebman groks a musical vision, he dreams big and deep. In the late 1990s," Liebman recalls, I embarked on a project to musically depict manifestations of the four natural elements. In 1997 I recorded Water with Pat Metheny, Billy Hart and Cecil McBee; in 2006, I did Air with the ...
Mike Fahie Jazz Orchestra: Urban(e)
by Jack Bowers
Most Western music, irrespective of its origin and premise, inhabits the same harmonic, chordal and rhythmic universe. So it should not be surprising that classical music, in the hands of a skilled arranger, can be readily recast in a jazz idiom, even one that is housed within a big-band framework. On Urban(e), trombonist Mike Fahie's New ...

