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Daniel Herskedal: Voyage
by Geno Thackara
You know what they say: nothing opens doors and wins people over like playing an instrument. It can make the most unlikely artist into a star. It may seem like rock guitarists or charismatic saxophone players get most of the attention, but learn to handle a tuba and it can really take you anywhere.
Marilyn Mazur: Shamania
by Don Phipps
Marilyn Mazur's album Shamania is fascinating. Both impressionistic and abstract, it emphasizes wordless vocals and sounds while incorporating elements of global jazz and world music. The ten artists who play with Mazur are all women and hail from the Scandinavian avant-garde jazz scene. Mazur's compositions are like kaleidoscopic postcards. The set begins with the ...
Gurf Morlix: Impossible Blue
by Doug Collette
An object lesson in simplicity, Gurf Morlix' Impossible Blue is one fast shuffle away from pure excellence. Yet even with due recognition for this, his tenth album, the Americana Award-winning man may yet remain better known by association: collaboration with Americana master Peter Case on his eponymous debut and as a fifteen-year tenure Lucinda Williams (during ...
Brent Birckhead: Birckhead
by Chris Mosey
Having positioned himself at the outer limits of expression, wailing and bleeping on his alto saxophone as he hurls his long, dreadlocked hair around like a dervish, Brent Birckhead obviously feels he can now occasionally relax, cease heeding the call of his neuroses and play what is sometimes quite beautiful music. This realization has been a ...
Don Byron / Aruan Ortiz: Random Dances And (A)tonalities
by John Sharpe
The title Random Dances And (A)tonalities hints at the inclusive nature of this studio encounter between Cuban-born, New York-based pianist Aruán Ortiz and American clarinetist Don Byron. Ortiz's admiration for Byron's work caused him to seek out the reedman and led to this session that brings together their varied backgrounds. Between the two, they encompass early ...
Matt Savage Groove Experiment: Splash Variations
by Jack Bowers
Matt Savage, a young man who knows his way around a keyboard (a child prodigy, he recorded his first album, Live at the Olde Mill, when he was barely nine years old), has added a new twist, namely soul / funk, to Splash Variations, the thirteenth recording under his name and first as leader of the ...
Derek Menchan: The Griot Swings the Classics
by Jim Olin
Multi-instrumentalist Derek Menchan refers to them as “snapshots in black," and certainly the covers from the American Negro collection on The Griot Swings the Classics delivering a rich history lesson, especially in the context of the shocking racial division happening in the 21st century. But from just a pure musical standpoint, the album is strong and ...
Oddgeir Berg Trio: In The End Of The Night
by Dan McClenaghan
Oddgeir Berg Trio, out of Norway, came in with a compelling and fully-formed voice from the very beginning, with a particularly fine debut, Before Dawn (Ozella Music, 2018). Headed by pianist Berg, the group has wasted no time in releasing their sophomore effort, In The End of the Night. There is something to be said for ...
Jim Brenan 11: 50 / 50
by Jack Bowers
A popular jazz magazine once had (and perhaps still has) a list of CDs in most issues labeled “beyond category." 50 / 50, the debut (?) recording by Canadian saxophonist / composer Jim Brenan's eleven-piece ensemble, would fit quite comfortably therein. It is as hard to ascertain Brenan's frames of reference as it is to unravel ...
Dave Liebman, Adam Rudolph, Hamid Drake: Chi
by Don Phipps
Recorded live at John Zorn's New York City experimental jazz club The Stone in May of 2018, the trio of saxophonist extraordinaire Dave Liebman and multi-instrumentalists/percussionists Hamid Drake and Adam Rudolph use their album Chi to present amazing tone poems and dynamic musical explorations. Liebman's full-throated saxophone voicings juxtapose with Drake and Rudolph's rolling ...
