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Yelena Eckemoff: Nocturnal Animals
by Dan McClenaghan
"You're busy appearing or you're busy disappearing." Drummer-bandleader Art Blakey may have said that; if he didn't, he should have. Somebody had to express the importance of presenting your work, for getting it out there to an audience. This goes for virtually any artist in any medium. Double down on that for people who create jazz. ...
Jackie Allen: A Romantic Evening with Jackie Allen - Live At the Rococo
by Nicholas F. Mondello
In New York City, there's Radio City, the Blue Note, Birdland, and many other fine venues. Each has its own vibe and Big Apple flavor. In Lincoln, Nebraska there's the Rococo Theater—a gorgeously restored 1920s theater with a slick, small club ambience where vocalist Jackie Allen and her mates chose to record an evening's performance. The ...
Marcelo Dos Reis: Points
by John Sharpe
Points unites four partners in crime, who may be familiar from excellent albums such as Chamber 4 (FMR, 2015) and For Sale (Clean Feed, 2015). But though there are many interconnections between the Portuguese threesome of guitarist Marcelo dos Reis, drummer Marco Franco and trumpeter Luis Vicente, and French cellist Valentin Ceccaldi, this is their first ...
Ingrid Laubrock + Aki Takase: Kasumi
by Don Phipps
Looking into a mirror, one can see a reflection. Holding a mirror up to a mirror, one can see not only one reflection but a series of reflections. Kasumi, a chamber-jazz album from pianist Aki Takase and saxophonist Ingrid Laubrock, is a lot like that--the compositions form a series of reflections, in this case highlighted by ...
Marlon Martinez: Yours Truly
by Paul Naser
"Lock up your drummers, this bass monster will inflame them all!" This high praise for Los Angeles-based bassist-composer Marlon Martinez comes care of none other than legendary drummer Stewart Copeland who is featured on the young virtuoso's debut album, Yours Truly (Self Produced, 2019). A graduate of the prestigious Colburn Conservatory of Music in Los Angeles, ...
Areni Agbabian: Bloom
by Michael McKinney
Singer and pianist Areni Agbabian is probably best known for her work with Armenian-American pianist-wunderkind Tigran Hamasyan, in which the two musicians draw from their shared Armenian heritage. Both are also adept at creating moments of hazy and ethereal beauty. Bloom, Agbabian's ECM debut, made without Hamasyan, focuses on such moments. The album ...
Yakir Arbib: My Name Is Yakir
by Don Phipps
Clever and entertaining, My Name is Yakir offers a diverse potpourri of jazz standards and original compositions performed by pianist Yakir Arbib. The music contrasts standards from the Dixieland, swing, bebop and hard bop eras with five originals that mix classical idioms with loose jazz structures. Arbib certainly has talent and his technical dexterity permits him ...
Ruben Machtelinckx / Joachim Badenhorst / Bert Cools / Toma Gouband: Porous Structures
by Mark Corroto
Is there such a thing as emo jazz? If not, then Ruben Machtelinckx's quartet has produced a new genre of creative and improvised music. We're not talking screaming post-punk guitars. Porous Structures is an acoustic affair that relies on delicate and sparse sounds. And maybe, just maybe, it's what the world needs now. Machtelinckx ...
Will Sellenraad - Eric McPherson - Rene Hart: Greene Street Vol.1
by Geno Thackara
Considering how well Will Sellenraad clearly knows the history and ins-and-outs of jazz guitar, he might seem to be making a statement by using a title so reminiscent of Grant Green's classic Green Street (Blue Note, 1961). To be sure, this one does show the influence of some key six-stringers such as Green, Wes Montgomery, Pat ...
Ahmed: Super Majnoon (East Meets West)
by Mark Corroto
There are discoveries in jazz waiting (patiently) to be unearthed. Most of them are hidden in plain sight, like the music of Ahmed Abdul-Malik. Born in Brooklyn in 1927, the bassist performed and recorded with, among others Art Blakey, John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk, and Randy Weston. Besides double bass, he pioneered the oud in jazz and ...
