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Kurt Elling: Man In The Air
by Joshua Weiner
When recording songs written by other artists, the jazz musician faces a dilemma: how to pay homage to, and show respect for, the composer's vision, while at the same time bringing to the tune a fresh approach and original talent? On his new Blue Note record, Man In The Air, vocalist Kurt Elling walks this tightrope ...
Kurt Elling: Man in the Air
by Dan McClenaghan
It's often said of particular jazz singers: “He's (she's) really got a good set of pipes." And the compliment seems meant to denote the sheer God-given beauty of the vocal instument. The thirty-five year old Kurt Elling, who came to jazz singing relatively late in life – though his vocal beginnings can be traced back to ...
Greg Osby: St. Louis Shoes
by Franz A. Matzner
It takes time to assess St. Louis Shoes. In fact, to wax intellectual about the process, it requires the exegetical approach usually reserved for vast, inter-textual novels like Dr. Faustus or Gravity's Rainbow. Each encounter reveals ever new intrigues, insights, and moments of grace. And just like with Faust, you?d better go back to the source ...
Jason Moran: The Bandwagon
by Jay Collins
Without a doubt, Jason Moran is now at the forefront of so-called modern jazz. While he has his share of detractors, his stature is certainly deserved. Possessed with a fearless technique, an impressive pedigree (both in terms of his mentors and his former employers), a striking compositional style and adventurousness within the conventional framework of the ...
Jane Bunnett: Cuban Odyssey
by Chris M. Slawecki
Jane Bunnett visited Cuba for the first time in 1982, but in many ways – musically, at least – she has never really left. This Odyssey presents music from Havana and three other locales recorded during her trip to Cuba with trumpeter, producer and husband Larry Cramer, featuring Bunnett on flute and soprano ...
Pat Martino: Think Tank
by Clifford Allen
It is difficult to make mainstream jazz (hard bop, etc.) relevant in light of the subversion or destruction of its form that occurred over thirty years ago. But, as many improvisers proved, it was possible to make consistently engaging and advanced music in the hard bop idiom well after the innovations of Ornette and Cecil took ...
Jane Bunnett: Cuban Odyssey
by Franz A. Matzner
Equal parts ethno-musicological study and experiment, Cuban Odyssey offers a captivating investigation of native Cuban music as interpreted by flautist and soprano saxophonist Jane Bunnett and her husband, trumpeter Larry Cramer. Latin influences have been prominent in jazz since at least the 1940s, with new evidence suggesting that Afro-Cuban and other Latin based structures were integral ...
Ron Carter: The Golden Striker
by Franz A. Matzner
Most renowned—and in some ways unfairly so—for his tenure with the famed Miles Davis Quintet, Ron Carter has remained a renowned figure of jazz for so long that it is difficult to imagine a jazz fan who could be wholly unaware of his contributions to the evolution of the upright bass, as well as jazz music’s ...
Dianne Reeves: A Little Moonlight
by Jim Santella
A little moonlight can work wonders on your spirits. Aside from the obvious romantic overtones, the presence of the moon looking down on you night after night works as an old friend who’s never too far away to say hello. Again and again. It’s the same moon that conversed with our earliest ancestors all across the ...
Jason Moran: The Bandwagon
by Franz A. Matzner
Evaluating Jason Moran’s latest release, Bandwagon, feels as inconsequential as describing the relative worth of oceanic conditions or the comparative pleasures of desert vistas, mountainous landscapes, and tundra planes. For Moran’s music is as much a display of nature, and incorporating as varied a range of phenomena, as the above physical environments. Moran ...
