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Ben Markley Quartet: Slow Play
by Jack Bowers
The jacket cover on this splendid new studio recording from OA2 Records reads “Ben Markley Quartet Featuring Joel Frahm," and for good reason: the New York City-based saxophonist lends considerable improvisational weight to Slow Play, which would be a far different animal without him. That's not to say that pianist Markley, bassist Marty Kenney and drummer ...
Vinz Vonlanthen: No Man's Land
by Glenn Astarita
Swiss improvising guitarist Vinz Vonlanthen constructs his second solo guitar album since Oeil (Leo, 2004) amid his more recent collaborative recordings for Leo Records, largely featuring like-minded French artists. Otherwise, it's an apt album title via the guitarist's resonating electric avant-garde workouts, speckled with his wordless voice overlays on several tracks. Essentially, he conveys despair and ...
Red Priest: Handel in the Wind: Messiah and Other Masterworks
by C. Michael Bailey
This particular performance of Messiah deserves its own seperate review, in addition to Handel's Messiah 2019. Red Priest, a Baroque specialty quartet named for that most famous Italian ginger of the period, Antonio Vivaldi, has been called: “visionary and heretical," “outrageous yet compulsive," “wholly irreverent and highly enlightened," and “completely wild and deeply imaginative." These expert ...
Nat King Cole: Hittin’ the Ramp: The Early Years (1936-1943)
by Mark Sullivan
Before pianist/vocalist Nat King Cole had a career as a pop crooner--his many hits included “All for You," “The Christmas Song," “(Get Your Kicks on) Route 66," “(I Love You) For Sentimental Reasons," “Nature Boy" and “Mona Lisa" (the No. 1 song in 1950)--he led a successful jazz trio which featured both his piano playing and ...
Big Beat: Sounds Good, Feels Good
by Jack Bowers
So what can be reported about Big Beat, an eighteen-piece ensemble from New Jersey whose debut album, Sounds Good, Feels Good, is more pop / rock than jazz, more “hip / contemporary" than straight-ahead / traditional? First, that the band certainly Sounds Good as a unit, skating easily through an assortment of backbeat-heavy themes that consist ...
Mike De Souza: Slow Burn
by Friedrich Kunzmann
While making his way to reputation in the world of jazz guitar, British composer Mike de Souza was lucky enough to have been able to play with contemporary greats such as Terence Blanchard while receiving his education on the guitar by leading players John Parricelli and Gilad Hekselman, among others. The guitarist co-leads the young British ...
Scott Henderson: People Mover
by Glenn Astarita
Scott Henderson looms as one of the reigning guitar heroes since the mid-1980s, beginning with the powerhouse jazz fusion band Tribal Tech—an outfit that helped bring this genre back to life after it waned in the late 1970s and early 1980s. And other than his lengthy and impressive solo career, he's performed with the Zawinul Syndicate, ...
P. J. Perry Featuring Bill Mays: This Quiet Room
by Jack Bowers
In jazz, as in almost any other pursuit, there really is no stand-in for experience. P. .J. Perry, now well into his seventh decade, has been a titan on Canada's saxophone scene for more than half a century, while California-born pianist Bill Mays, three years Perry's junior and his able collaborator on the duo album This ...
London Afrobeat Collective: Humans
by Bruce Lindsay
Hard-driving, politically-charged, rhythmic, irresistibly-danceable music; what else could be expected from a band that mixes influences from Fela Kuti, Parliament/Funkadelic, Frank Zappa, and Nile Rogers and Bernard Edwards into one exciting and uplifting musical pot? Such expectations are high, but the London Afrobeat Collective meets them with ease. There have been a few personnel ...
Made To Break: F4 Fake
by Mark Corroto
If you count their three download-only releases from 2016, F4 Fake by Ken Vandermark's Made To Break is the band's ninth release since forming in 2011. This is significant because like his quintet Vandermark 5, which existed from 1996 until 2010, this quartet and his ensemble Marker are the main drivers for the trailblazing composer. Not ...
