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Portraits Jazz Project: Portraits Featuring Adalia Tara
by Karl Ackermann
Portraits is a relatively new quintet out of Sedona, Arizona. The group has been making the rounds on the area circuit since 2016; initially formed from a spontaneous, hometown, coffee-house session, word spread quickly and the group outgrew that venue by their second performance. The members of the quintet have skirted around the fringes of jazz ...
Jonah Parzen-Johnson: Helsinki 8.12.18
by Karl Ackermann
Chicago native Jonah Parzen-Johnson has music degrees from NYU and Manhattan School of Music, and the tutelage of the AACM in his background, but he keeps all that at arms-length. The Brooklyn resident continues to pursue his inimitable experimental music on Helsinki 8.12.18, his fourth solo album to feature baritone saxophone and electronics. The session was ...
Romain Collin: Tiny Lights...
by Jerome Wilson
Romain Collin is a young pianist whose previous recordings have shown an affinity for electronic textures and minimalism. This release expands on those ideas. It adds rock energy and hip hop beats to create a buzzing, mechanized universe of sound where Collin's piano is often the most human element on display. The set begins ...
Andrew McCormack: Graviton: The Calling
by Roger Farbey
Following in the wake of Andrew McCormack's Graviton (Jazz Village, 2017) comes Graviton: The Calling. All Graviton's personnel have changed save for McCormack and Robin Mullarkey, who plays bass guitar on three tracks. The most notable new recruit is Italian-American vocalist Noemi Nuti, who is also a trained harpist. The portentous opener, “Uroboros," gives ...
Dave Stryker: Eight Track III
by Mark Sullivan
Guitarist Dave Stryker says this is the last of his trilogy of classic pop melodies from the 1970s. If so, its release is a little bittersweet: because like the other two it is a truly fun project, for the players and listeners alike. Completing the trilogy was suggested by vibraphonist Stefon Harris, who had appeared on ...
Satoko Fujii: Stone
by Karl Ackermann
There is something reassuring in Satoko Fujii's solo work, even in its most distant forms. While the pianist and composer doesn't repeat the past, the unexpected character of her music is itself the Fujii brand. In a 2018 All About Jazz interview, she spoke of her desire to create music never heard before. With Stone, she ...
4 Wheel Drive: 4 Wheel Drive
by Geno Thackara
It may not quite be the loud and fast thrill-ride one might guess from the title, but that doesn't mean it lacks a few fun twists and turns. Here we have four world-class players who can (and sometimes do) carry a whole performance on their own, agreeing to mesh as equals and—more importantly—staying generous and supportive ...
Chris Lomheim - Michael O'Brien - Jay Epstein: Triage
by Friedrich Kunzmann
Triage refers to the process of weeding-out, deciding about what gets eliminated, on the one hand, and what stays, on the other. In the context of this album, its title can be interpreted as the process these three musicians have gone through during the course of over twenty years of collaborating, captured on the eleven original ...
Alex Sipiagin: NoFo Skies
by Mike Jurkovic
An active veteran of touring stages around the world, Russian trumpeter Alex Sipiagin has sessioned with, among many, Dr. John, Elvis Costello, Dave Holland's Big Band, Michael Brecker's Sextet and Quindecet, plus the Mingus Big Band, Dynasty Band, and Orchestra. For NoFo Skies, his first disc on Blue Room, Sipiagin reassembles his crackling three-horn septet from ...
Michael Rossetto: Intermodal Blues
by Mark Sullivan
Michael Rossetto is a self-taught banjoist and guitarist, whose musical travels have taken him into global music. The focus of Intermodal Blues is the five string banjo, an instrument steeped in traditional American folk and bluegrass music. But Rosetto finds his inspirations elsewhere: in the West African kora and other instruments that were ancestors to the ...
