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Rahsaan Roland Kirk: An Alternative Top Ten Albums Guaranteed To Bend Your Head
by Chris May
Jazz musicians are rarely called shamanistic but the description fits Rahsaan Roland Kirk precisely. Clad in black leather trousers and heavy duty shades (he was blind from the age of two), a truckload of strange looking horns strung round his neck—two or three of which he often played simultaneously--twisting, shaking and otherwise contorting his body, stamping ...
Horizons Jazz Orchestra: Plays the Music of Lee Harris: The Brite Side
by Jack Bowers
One question that springs to mind when listening to The Brite Side, a tantalizing new CD by the South Florida-based Horizons Jazz Orchestra, is: who is Lee Harris? As it turns out, Harris was a composer, arranger and baritone saxophonist who teamed with trumpeter Dennis Noday a few years back to co-found an ensemble they named ...
Adam Shulman Septet: West Meets East
by Jack Bowers
The “west" here is represented by San Francisco-based pianist and group leader Adam Shulman, the “east" by the other half-dozen members of Shulman's impressive septet. Even though the reasons that led to the alliance are ambiguous, what matters is the payoff, and that is more than admirable from any vantage point. As if ...
Bill Frisell: Valentine
by Ian Patterson
In an extraordinarily varied career Bill Frisell has made just a handful of trio recordings as leader, which is perhaps surprising given how frequently he performs in such a setting. In recent years the Baltimore-born, Denver-raised guitarist has toured two of his most empathetic trios, that with Kenny Wollesen and Tony Scherr and, latterly, with Rudy ...
Denny Zeitlin: Live at Mezzrow
by Dan McClenaghan
Pianist Denny Zeitlin appeared on his first recording in 1963, flautist Jeremy Steigs' Flute Fever (Columbia Records). He was in his third year at Johns Hopkins Medical School at the time, on a path to dual careers in psychiatry and eventually the teaching of that profession—vocations he continues with to this day. Add a ...
Duo Baars-Buis: Moods For Roswell
by Mark Corroto
It is difficult to think of a better way of honoring the memory of trombonist Roswell Rudd than through the music of Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn. Rudd (1935-2017), the eternal avant-gardist, maintained a firm foundation in the jazz tradition. Even when he was working in the New York Art Quartet or collaborating with Archie Shepp ...
Festival International de Jazz de Montréal 2020
by Mark Sullivan
2020 Festival International de Jazz de Montréal Various Venues Montréal, Canada June 27-30, 2020 Above all else the Festival International de Jazz de Montréal is a spectacular ten-day event: with around 2 million visitors and 500 concerts on 20 stages, it is ranked as the world's largest jazz ...
Jazzagenturen: The Stockholm Corona Sessions Volume One
by Jim Worsley
The Swedish jazz collective Jazzagenturen, founded by Pontus de Wolfe, reached deep into its collective soul and stood up to the downsides of the Covid-19 coronavirus early on. This large ensemble entered a studio on April 2nd. Twelve hours later they emerged having recorded fifty songs. The Stockholm Corona Sessions are being released in five volumes, ...
Kansas Smitty's: Things Happened Here
by Chris May
Kansas Smitty's is the house band at a London jazz bar of the same name. Band and bar are fronted by the American-Italian alto saxophonist, clarinetist and bass clarinetist Giacomo Smith, who with guitarist David Archer wrote most of the material on this album. The band's style embraces swing era Kansas City through to more recent ...
Dinosaur: To The Earth
by Ian Patterson
One of the flag bearers of contemporary British jazz, Dinosaur's rise to more international renown accelerated with its signing to Edition Records, and the subsequent release of Together, As One (2016) and Wondertrail. (2018). Formerly known as the Laura Jurd Quartet, the band had already been going since 2010, releasing one album, Landing Ground (Chaos Collective, ...
