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Damon Locks Black Monument Ensemble: Where Future Unfolds
by Gareth Thompson
A creative force known as the Black Renaissance emerged on Chicago's South Side in the 1930s and developed through the next decades. This movement produced visual artists, writers and musicians, who explored new ideals of black culture via theatre, art works and composition to address social issues. Damon Locks might seem a modern torch-bearer ...
Longineu Parsons: 25th Anniversary Work Song
by Chris Mosey
Longineu Parsons blows his trumpet with fearsome intensity on the first four tracks of this album celebrating the 25th anniversary of Nat Adderley's classic soul number “Work Song." Perhaps he blows it with enough intensity to wake the dead: Nat Adderley who died on January 2, 2000, is credited with production, while the great but largely ...
Fred Hersch & the WDR Big Band: Begin Again
by Jerome Wilson
Throughout pianist Fred Hersch's long career, he has mostly worked in trios and other small units, rarely doing much with large ensembles. That makes this session of Hersch featured with Germany's WDR Big Band a special treat. They play a program of the pianist's compositions from various parts of his career, all arranged and conducted by ...
Lisen Rylander Löve: Oceans
by Troy Dostert
While up-and-coming Swede Lisen Rylander Löve is a talented tenor saxophonist, demonstrated nicely in the quartet Here's to Us on the undersung gem, Animals, Wild and Tame (Hoob Records, 2018), she is hardly content to limit herself to one instrument--or even one genre, for that matter. In Here's to Us she teams up with trumpeter Susana ...
Michael J Bolton: Earthrise
by Roger Farbey
Not the first record to salute the fiftieth anniversary of the first man on the moon, and probably not the last, Earthrise is composer, producer and bassist Michael J Bolton's own lunar landing. Rob Cope's Gods Of Apollo (Ubuntu Music, 2019) is just one recent example on the same theme, but this is hardly a criticism ...
Mark Winkler: I'm With You
by Nicholas F. Mondello
Regarding tribute albums--a seemingly endless flow these days -it's a rarity when the honoree, the material and the performance mesh so perfectly. Los Angeles vocalist/songwriter/educator Mark Winkler's I'm With You fits that description to a T--in this case Bobby Troup. This effort, a hip, hip array of Troup's iconic material is a marvelously presented and performed ...
Lucinda Belle: Think Big: Like Me
by Paul Naser
Oscar nominated singer-songwriter Lucinda Belle isn't the first to do what she does, but she may be among the most eclectic; the vocalist/harpist keeps tradition alive by feeding it with myriad influences. Though her vocal style and choice of instrumentation often suggest jazz, she reaches well beyond the idiom while staying true to its roots. Her ...
Michael Jefry Stevens: Red's Blues
by Maurizio Zerbo
Il dinamismo culturale di Michael Jefry Stevens ci ha abituati a progetti diversi, dal free-jazz al mainstream senza soluzione di continuità. Il musicista statunitense ha elevato a regola un principio aureo del jazz: la capacità di trasformazione della propria cifra espressiva, per rivelare di continuo nuove sfaccettature stilistiche. In questo CD live ...
Michael Jefry Stevens: Live at Streamside
by Maurizio Zerbo
Ecco un grande CD regalatoci da un artista riservato, meritevole di ben altre attenzioni mediatiche. È un concentrato di buon gusto e passione, con pregevoli interventi solistici, sempre lineari e cantabili. A differenza di altri colleghi di livello, Michael Jefry Stevens guarda solo alle ragioni del cuore, per realizzare album all'insegna della poetica progettualità. Oltre alla ...
Avery Sharpe: 400: An African American Musical Portrait
by Troy Dostert
In 1619 the White Lion, a British privateer which had just successfully raided a Spanish slave ship, arrived in the Jamestown colony with its contraband cargo of twenty-some African slaves. Thus began the tumultuous legacy of the African American experience in North America—a four-hundred-year saga that bassist Avery Sharpe traces skilfully and poignantly on 400: An ...
