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Michael Gregory Jackson Clarity Quartet: WHENUFINDITUWILLKNOW
by Troy Dostert
A guitarist with a prodigious recorded legacy and an omnivorous stylistic range, Michael Gregory Jackson's return to his avant-jazz roots during the past couple of decades has been a welcome, if under-recognized, development. While he cut his teeth in the '70s loft scene in the company of luminaries such as Wadada Leo Smith, Oliver Lake, Julius ...
Quinsin Nachoff's Flux: Path Of Totality
by Jerome Wilson
Quinsin Nachoff is a saxophonist and composer who draws inspiration from the world around him. The 2017 solar eclipse, the 2016 American presidential election, Kenny Wheeler and John Cage all figured in the creation of the music on Path Of Totality, an ambitious program combining jazz, classical music and prog rock. It is performed by his ...
Euphorium_freakestra: Grande Casino
by Mark Corroto
It may be fitting that the very first translation of James Joyce's Ulysses was from English into German. What, you ask, does this have to do with the three- disc release Grande Casino by Euphorium_freakestra? It's not a suggestion to read (or attempt to read) Ulysses, a book so dense in its 730 pages that it ...
Paul Jost: Simple Life
by Gloria Krolak
Just sometimes an album pierces your consciousness, embedding itself like an arrow propelled into a bale of hay. Paul Jost's Simple Life is one of that rare breed, a welcome intrusion into the grey matter where emotion and language spark axons. Jost is an expert at both. And a master at unifying diverse and eclectic material. ...
Vijay Iyer and Craig Taborn: The Transitory Poems
by Mike Jurkovic
Perhaps curiously or perhaps purposely for these two inspired alumni of Roscoe Mitchell's Note Factory, The Transitory Poems enters existence with the anticipatory, lets-get-acquainted improvisation “Life Line (Seven Tensions)," before each pianist's creative wanderlust and imagination takes hold and the music becomes a ranging, raging real-time white-hot collaborative statement. Recorded live at the Franz ...
Stu Mindeman: Woven Threads
by Angelo Leonardi
"Wowen Threads" è una metafora per intrecciare cose diverse in un'unica dimensione. Lo considero un lavoro molto intimo in quanto lega le mie esperienze di musicista jazz nord americano con quanto ho appreso lavorando in Sud America, specialmente in Cile." Con queste parole Stu Mindeman presenta quest'album registrato sia in Cile con musicisti locali ...
Steve Davis: Correlations
by Peter J. Hoetjes
Exploration and innovation may be the aspiration of modern jazz, but trombonist Steve Davis' Correlations exemplifies the fact that nothing proves more compelling than the timeless art of gathering a group of musicians who work remarkably well together. A veteran of The Jazz Messengers, One For All, and The Jazztet, Davis has a wealth of experience ...
Bobby Sparks II: Schizophrenia: The Yang Project
by Roger Farbey
Listening to this incredible double CD it's hard to believe that this is Bobby Sparks II's first album under his own name. Granted he has contributed to many records in his quarter-century career, notably with the likes of Kirk Franklin, Roy Hargrove, Marcus Miller, Fred Hammond and Annie Clark (aka St. Vincent). However, this prodigious double-album ...
Neuköllner Modelle: Zyklus 1
by Mark Corroto
The third release by the trio Neuköllner Modelle, saxophonist Bertrand Denzler, bassist Joel Grip, and drummer Sven-Åke Johansson, Zyklus 1 might be considered a zen chronicle. The four lengthy tracks reveal the true nature of improvised sound, group interaction, and thus, the essence of meditation. Like meditation, their music is very simple, yet extremely hard to ...
Gene Ess: Apotheosis
by Chris Mosey
The inspiration for Apotheosis, Japanese-American guitarist Gene Ess's fourth album, is taken from mythologist James Campbell's book “The Hero with a Thousand Faces," first published in 1949. In this Campbell describes apotheosis as “the expansion of consciousness a hero experiences when defeating his foe." His theories concerning fictional heroes have been used as ...
