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by Geno Thackara
It's always nice to discover a meeting of new or unfamiliar bedfellows in the music world. However figuratively or geographically removed some things may seem to be--such as Scandinavia's fjords and the American heartland, let's just say for instance--you can probably count on a crew of good and willing players to find some common ground. Okay, ...
William Flynn: The Songbook Project
by Don Phipps
The Songbook Project from guitarist William Flynn provides jazz enthusiasts with great arrangements of some top-flight songs from the popular music catalog. On this album, one can hear jazz versions of music by the Smashing Pumpkins, Oasis, Radiohead, Nine Inch Nails, and Jewel. The musicians all add color to the music. “Tonight Tonight" opens ...
Michael Dease: Reaching Out
by Mark Corroto
Somebody has to be the keeper of the flame, right? In jazz, an art form that has only recently passed the century mark, that responsibility has seemed to diminish in importance. It's not that music schools aren't churning out graduates versed in the traditional repertory, and post-modern players aren't constantly pushing the envelope of possibilities. It's ...
Jamie Saft: Solo a Genova
by Dan McClenaghan
Pianist Jamie Saft's Solo A Genova is a revelation. It is, in an extensive discography, his only alone-in-the-piano-chair outing. Saft has made a wide-ranging mark in collaborations with Slobber Pup, Metallic Taste of Blood, The Spanish Donkey and Berserk! These group names don't say it all, but do probably say something (Brash? Unconventional? Loud?) about the ...
Satoko Fujii: Satoko Fujii Solo
by Karl Ackermann
In celebration of her sixtieth birthday, pianist/composer Satoko Fujii plans to release twelve albums in one year; one for each month of 2018. With many other artists it would be fair to question whether such output would compromise the integrity of the music but Fujii is--and has been--one of the most inexhaustible artists of her kind. ...
Ruben Machtelinckx/Frederik Leroux: when the shade is stretched
by Mark Sullivan
Ruben Machtelinckx and Frederik Leroux are both Belgian guitarists who have made increasing use of the banjo. They have previously performed together on Linus + Skarbo / Leroux (El Negocito Records, 2015)--Machtelinckx's project with reed player Thomas Jillings--but here they present separate solo programs. It's similar to each taking a side of an LP album. While ...
Elliot Galvin: The Influencing Machine
by Roger Farbey
The Influencing Machine is a concept album based on the book of the same name by Mike Jay. This true account tells the story of James Tilley-Matthews, a tea merchant and double agent, architect and political thinker. Born in 1770, Tilley- Matthews was renowned not just for his various and varied professional activities, but more because ...
Larry Ham/Woody Witt: Presence
by Geannine Reid
Larry Ham and Woody Witt's collaborative effort has brought forth the fruit of Presence, with the sophistication and melodic harmonic relationships that used to grace hard bop jazz, while still sporting just the right amount of abstract modernism from today's sound to supply a strong underpinning of the ensemble current. Woody Witt, a Houston ...
Michael Adkins Quartet: Flaneur
by Jakob Baekgaard
Canadian saxophonist Michael Adkins' third album, and his second on Hat Hut, Flaneur, arrives in a shroud of mystery. Back in 2008, Adkins released his debut for Hat Hut records, Rotator, but as it is turns out, he recorded another album the same year. It seems incredibly prolific, but it took ten years before it was ...
Sylvie Courvoisier Trio: D'Agala
by Troy Dostert
Swiss-born pianist Sylvie Courvoisier has spent close to twenty years in the states honing her distinctive approach to classically-inflected jazz improvisation. Along the way she's worked with a who's-who of leading-edge musicians, including veterans like John Zorn, Evan Parker and Ellery Eskelin, but also the younger generation of avant-gardists such as Mary Halvorson and Nate Wooley. ...
