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The Branford Marsalis Quartet with Special Guest Kurt Elling: Upward Spiral
by Dan Bilawsky
To one extent or another, jazz has always maintained a discriminatory dividing line between vocalists and instrumentalists. Instead of being viewed as equals--artists on par with all the rest, possessing the same good sense, skill, and stake in an artistic outcome--vocalists have often been unfairly stigmatized and interned in a separate category. But all of that ...
On Kaa Davis: X-Ray Search Light Project: Djuke Music
by Dave Wayne
Though he's logged considerable time in Sun Ra's Arkestra, Kenny Wolleson's Himalayas Collective, and groups led by Donald Ayler, Charles 'Bobo' Shaw, and Luther Thomas, On Kaa Davis is not just another avant-garde jazz dude. As a teenager, the Cleveland, Ohio native journeyed to Vienna, Austria, where he studied classical guitar at the Hochschule for Music ...
Matt Wilson’s Big Happy Family: Beginning of A Memory
by Mark Sullivan
For this mostly retrospective session drummer/composer Matt Wilson convened all of the members--past and present--of his longest established groups: the Matt Wilson Quartet, Arts & Crafts, and Christmas Tree-O. So it's not only a larger ensemble than usual, but also a melding of the different stylistic focuses represented by those projects. There are 13 players altogether, ...
Tomasz Dabrowski: S-O-L-O: 30th Birthday/30 Concerts/30 Cities
by Jakob Baekgaard
Playing solo is a challenge that takes a lot of discipline. Whereas jazz often relies on the exchange of ideas in a group, there is only one person to carry out what pianist Bill Evans called his conversations with himself." The consequence is that a soliloquy has the risk of going stale, but it can also ...
Richard Poole, Marilyn Crispell, Gary Peacock: In Motion
by Maurizio Zerbo
In Motion è un disco sorprendente, con cui la Marilyn Crispell oltrepassa il proprio orizzonte espressivo di riferimento. Sin dal brano iniziale, si ha la sensazione di ascoltare qualcosa di diverso rispetto ai suoi precedenti percorsi iconoclastici. Cambia l'aura, in continua oscillazione tra trame formali ed informali, tra fraseggio lirico e flusso ritmico fluttuante. Rimangono inalterati ...
The DIVA Jazz Orchestra: Special Kay!
by Jack Bowers
WOW! No, it is definitely not advisable to open a review with an unequivocal superlative (for one thing, it sort of gives the game away, doesn't it?). But on Special Kay!, its ninth impressive album in twenty-four years, DIVA--the gold standard among all-female big bands since its inception--really gives a commentator no reasonable ...
Eyolf Dale: Wolf Valley
by Roger Farbey
Thirty one year old pianist Eyolf Dale is a leading figure in contemporary jazz in his home country of Norway and an Associate Professor of applied piano at the Norwegian Academy of Music department of jazz studies. The album's title, Wolf Valley, is actually a play on his name as in Norwegian, Eyolf means wolf and ...
Sam Sadigursky: Follow The Stick
by Budd Kopman
After spending nearly ten years with the four Words Project albums (see here, here and here for three of them), reedman and multi-instrumentalist Sam Sadigursky has decided to concentrate on clarinet, returning to purely instrumental music with Follow The Stick. Starting initially with a trio comprised of pianist Bobby Avey (who work with Dave ...
Karen Lane Organ Project: Two Steps from the Blues
by Geno Thackara
From intimate singer-songwriter crooning to bossa nova, Karen Lane and her versatile voice have graced many a stage in quite different contexts. The blues have always been an ingredient in there as well--albeit an infrequent one usually represented by the occasional encore--so it was probably inevitable that this facet of her personality would get its own ...
Caroline Davis: Doors: Chicago Storylines
by Vincenzo Roggero
Caroline Davis si è fatta le ossa, musicalmente parlando, a Chicago città nella quale coltiva una serie di amicizie eccellenti -il contrabbassista Art Davis e il tenorista Von Freeman su tutti -e dove decide di mettere in piedi il suo attuale quartetto. Diventa quindi un'esigenza storico-affettiva -ora che da qualche tempo si è stabilita a New ...

