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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, ...
Lara Driscoll: Woven Dreams
by Jordan Penney
Woven Dreams is the debut album of pianist and Illinois-based university instructor, Lara Driscoll. The disc's uncluttered piano, bass and drums format encourages the clarity and luminosity of her compositions to shine forth, and they do. The format also draws attention to the richness of the group's internal dynamics. The influence of Bill Evans ...
John Swana: Philly Gumbo
by Victor L. Schermer
From the 1995-2003 archive: This article first appeared at All About Jazz in June 2000. In addition to being one of the finest contemporary jazz trumpet players, John Swana is a human being who is spontaneously authentic and refuses to play a false role. Having reached the ripe old age of 38, John has ...
Composer Tributes: Strayhorn, Shorter, Monk and Sam Jones
by Jerome Wilson
There always seem to be albums coming out that pay tribute to accomplished jazz composers. Here are some newer ones, three on very familiar names and one on an often overlooked musician. John Di Martino Passion Flower: The Music of Billy Strayhorn Sunnyside Records 2020 Pianist John ...
Laura Jurd: Getting Elemental
by Chris May
Whatever other delights come along during 2020 in the way of great jazz albums, it is a near certainty that among the joint number ones will be To The Earth (Edition) by Dinosaur. Formed as the Laura Jurd Quartet in 2010 by students at London's Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance, and still led by ...
Dave Glasser: Hypocrisy Democracy
by Dan Bilawsky
Something of a socio-political scythe--a title and tool cutting straight into the failing system that surrounds us--Hypocrisy Democracy is also a broad statement detailing the ceaselessly looping fallibility of man and his actions. It's saxophonist Dave Glasser's most probing work to date, bound to both our present state of affairs and the history it mirrors, and ...
Trout Mask Replica
by Eric Gudas
“No Instruction Sheet": Trout Mask Replica's Unfathomable Origin Story If you were a teenager who liked freaky stuff, on a June day in 1969 you could bicycle down to your local record store and buy a brand-new, shrink-wrapped album with a man covering his entire face with an actual fish head on the cover. A double-LP ...
Vince Mendoza: Streams of Influence Flowing into a River of Sound
by Victor L. Schermer
Vince Mendoza is a jazz composer, arranger, and conductor of consummate originality, skill, and adaptability, so much so that he has for several decades received frequent invitations and commissions from the whole gamut of ensembles and performers like the WDR Big Band, the Metropole Orkest in the Netherlands, the Los Angeles and Berlin Philharmonic, and the ...
