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Ron Thompson: Son of Boogie Woogie
by James Nadal
The Little Village Foundation is a non-profit record label started up under the direction of keyboardist Jim Pugh, who recently retired after twenty-five years with Robert Cray. The mission of this organization is to seek and record obscure yet prodigious musicians who have not received proper recognition and respect. Oakland guitarist Ron Thompson certainly falls into ...
Samuel Blais/David Liebman: Cycling
by Dan Bilawsky
There's no accounting for how great music comes together on record. Sometimes everything is meticulously laid out for months or years in advance, as artists use planning and implementation to their advantage in the creative process; other times, sparks just fly at spur of the moment sessions. Cycling falls into the latter category. ...
Rayford Griffin: Reflections of Brownie
by Dan McClenaghan
Trumpeter Clifford Brown left a big legacy, in spite of living a lamentably short life--he died in a car accident in 1956, when he was just twenty-five years old. His recordings with drummer Max Roach endure as near-perfect works of art. Sets like Study in Brown (1956), Clifford Brown and Max Roach (1954), Clifford Brown and ...
Eliza Neals: Breaking and Entering
by C. Michael Bailey
After singing the praises of one Detroit native, Greg Nagy on Stranded (Big O Records, 2015) for incorporating all that was good from Motown in his sound, another Detroit artist shoots straight out of the Motor City to Chicago and down the Mississippi River to parts unknown. Eliza Neals joins the inestimable Mandy Lemons Nikides of ...
Simon Phillips: Protocol 3
by Dave Wayne
A professional musician from the age of 12, Simon Phillips' drumming sound and style is instantly recognizable. He's toured and recorded with just about every major rock and pop act imaginable; from Mick Jagger, The Who and Toto to Judas Priest, Mike Oldfield, and Joe Satriani. Also an uber-session player, he's recorded countless jazz, fusion and ...
Michael Kocour: Wherever You Go, There You Are
by David A. Orthmann
Wherever You Go, There You Are, Michael Kocour's energetic, deeply focused, imaginatively performed solo recital, is a patchwork of eight, twentieth-century jazz and popular songs, as well as two of the pianist's original compositions. On the one hand, Kocour is clearly cognizant of the original intent and the performance history of material ranging from Con Alma," ...
Anna Webber's Percussive Mechanics: Refraction
by Glenn Astarita
Percussive Mechanics seems to be a fitting moniker for New York City- based saxophonist, composer Anna Webber's band, since the core building blocks of her intricately fabricated compositions are huddled within knotty flows and odd-metered rhythms. She doesn't operate within a narrow modus operandi, as each piece poses variable persuasions. A rising star in the avant-jazz ...
Greg Nagy: Stranded
by C. Michael Bailey
First, of course, is the voice. Tonally-even voices are boring. That explains the appeal of voices like Louis Armstrong's (pitch-perfect gravel in a coffee can); Richard Manuel's (pleading voice of a dying man); Levon Helm's (Scotch-Irish Delta dirt) and Neil Young's (dry ice on the range). Greg Nagy has a voice like that. It is beautifully ...
Dafnis Prieto Sextet: Triangles and Circles
by Dave Wayne
The thing that sets Latin jazz apart from other forms of jazz is that it's fundamentally a music for dance. The artists who create this music are expected to move gracefully back and forth between the worlds of jazz and salsa, sometimes in a single tune. Though it's overtly intended to get our bodies moving, Latin ...
Maria Schneider Orchestra: The Thompson Fields
by Dan Bilawsky
There's a wealth of information to be found inside the beautiful packaging that accompanies this release, but a brief Theodore Roosevelt quote may be the most telling piece of text to be found there. It reads: There is nothing more practical in the end than the preservation of beauty, than the preservation of anything that appeals ...

