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Wadada Leo Smith: Rosa Parks: Pure Love
by Jerome Wilson
Wadada Leo Smith has been on a roll in the 2010s, recording and composing in several formats, including ambitious, long-form works such as the Pulitzer-nominated Ten Freedom Summers (Cuneiform, 2012,) which dealt mostly with the history of race relations in America. His latest work concentrates on one specific figure mentioned in that suite, Rosa Parks, the ...
Kenner: 8Ball City
by Patrick Burnette
Although the promotional material indicates that keyboardist/producer/composer Eitan Kenner was experiencing personal turmoil during the creation of 8Ball City, the music is upbeat, almost giddy. Helium powered synths spin out surging melodies against compound rhythms and chord progressions climb ever heavenward. Call it “happy prog," complex, cheerful music that nods to Frank Zappa without getting clenched ...
Alexander Hawkins: Iron Into Wind
by John Sharpe
On his second solo album pianist Alexander Hawkins creates an adventurous and deeply personal synthesis which draws from both jazz and classical wellsprings. One of the foremost representatives of an exciting younger generation of British musicians, his talents are on display not only on his own projects, like Uproot (Intakt, 2018), but with growing circle of ...
Various Artists: La Casa Murada MoonJune Sessions, Volume 1
by Mark Sullivan
Magic seems to happen routinely at Spain's La Casa Murada Residential Recording Studio, a converted 12th century farmhouse, at least during the MoonJune Records recording sessions. For listeners who have not been following the label's releases, this generous 80-minute sampler offers a delightful overview. For those who have, it includes one track released in advance of ...
Various Artists: Jazz Fest: The New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival
by Jakob Baekgaard
On the surface, some jazz festivals look a lot like each other, with the same established names travelling around the globe. This is globalization at its worst, meaning we can travel endless miles to hear the same musicians we could have heard in our own backyard. However, a good jazz festival is also a celebration of ...
Animal Society: Rise
by Roger Farbey
Strictly speaking, Rise, the debut recording by Animal Society should qualify as an extended play (EP) release. However, given the fact that it weighs-in at just a few seconds short of forty minutes it also qualifies as a de facto album since plenty of the true stars of jazz (Ayler, Coltrane, Rollins, to name but a ...
Tom Cawley: Catenaccio
by Roger Farbey
Tom Cawley has been a familiar presence on the British jazz scene for well over a decade. He teaches piano and improvisation in the jazz department of London's Royal Academy of Music and he's led his group Curios since its debut album, Hidden, was released in 2007 on Jazzizit Records. Cawley won the Young Jazz Musician ...
Gabriel Latchin Trio: The Moon And I
by Roger Farbey
Following on from Gabriel Latchin's eponymous debut album Introducing Gabriel Latchin Trio (Alys Jazz, 2017), The Moon And I, recorded in London in February 2018, seeks to consolidate his position as a first rate straight ahead jazz pianist. Indeed his style is not dissimilar to George Shearing, Oscar Peterson, André Previn or Dudley Moore. As with ...
Spinifex: Soufifex
by Vitalijus Gailius
The Amsterdam-based sextet Spinifex—well known for their passion to cross stylistic borders, tight irregular structures and robust improvisational eruptions—still continue their journey through different musical traditions. On their fifth full-length album, Soufifex, the ensemble flee the European musical tradition and turn their faces to the Oriental world, i.e. to the Sufi, mystical Islamic belief and practice ...
Laurence Hobgood: Tesseterra
by Roger Farbey
"Jazz with strings" is a phrase that sometimes invokes a heart-sink feeling amongst reviewers. Happily this is not one of those occasions. Laurence Hobgood has released a half dozen records under his own name but many more for vocalist Kurt Elling with whom he's been musical director, co-producer and accompanist for over twenty years. During that ...
