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Article: Album Review

Diva: A Swingin' Life

Read "A Swingin' Life" reviewed by Edward Blanco

by Edward Blanco
September 20, 2014

What do you get when you have fifteen talented and swinging female jazz musicians in an orchestral setting? The answer, drummer Sherrie Maricle and the DIVA Jazz Orchestra offering A Swingin' Life as proof that hard-charging big band music is not the exclusivity of the male gender. Building upon the work of more than a dozen ...

Article: Album Review

The Old 97s: Most Messed Up

Read "Most Messed Up" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey

by C. Michael Bailey
September 20, 2014

How great is it to discover a band that has been here all along? The Old 97s are nothing new. Coming together in Dallas in 1993, the popular quartet led by the aptly-named Rhett Butler has recorded 15 studio CDs since 1994's Hitchhike to Rhome (Idol Records). The band emerged as part of ...

Article: Album Review

Luke Paulo And The Grapefruit: Mirrors

by Chris Mosey
September 20, 2014

The lights dim. A figure steps onto the stage holding a guitar. He wears a dark suit and a fedora hat and sings his own melancholy lyrics in a deep, lugubrious voice. Could it be...? Well, of course not. This is a small club in the vastly unhip English city of Reading, in ...

Article: Album Review

Chris Dundas / Arild Andersen / Bendik Hofseth / Patrice Heral: Oslo Odyssey

Read "Oslo Odyssey" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
September 19, 2014

What's up with Oslo, Norway? Two of the outstanding recordings by of 2014 have come out of the city: pianist Paul Bley's Play Blue (ECM Records), and now Los Angeles-based pianist Chris Dundas' Oslo Odyssey (BLM Records). Dundas' profile isn't exactly soaring through the stars. He has one previous recording as a leader to ...

Article: Album Review

Tunto: Huvi

by Anthony Shaw
September 19, 2014

Tunto is a band providing what its Finnish name can be translated into -'a sense of feeling.' Although described disparagingly in one reviewer as veering towards New Age, this is music for a variety of moods. This is reflected in the song titles, on this their fourth to album to date, ranging from Stalking Music via ...

Article: Album Review

Ernie Watts: A Simple Truth

Read "A Simple Truth" reviewed by Edward Blanco

by Edward Blanco
September 19, 2014

After sixteen albums as leader, two-time Grammy-Award-winning saxophonist Ernie Watts presents a concept album, a journey of sorts, a musical description of a “jazz day" beginning with a morning piece and ending with an evening song in declaration of A Simple Truth. Recorded in Cologne, Germany, with his touring European quartet--together for over fifteen years--Watts imagines ...

Article: Album Review

I Compani: Verdi 2.00

Read "Verdi 2.00" reviewed by Libero Farnè

by Libero Farnè
September 19, 2014

I Compani, affiatata compagine olandese diretta da Bo van de Graaf, è ben nota per aver affrontato a più riprese la musica di Nino Rota e per aver reinterpretato in anni recenti L'ultimo tango a Parigi di Gato Barbieri. In occasione del secondo centenario della nascita di Giuseppe Verdi, il gruppo ha pensato bene di misurarsi ...

Article: Album Review

Jason Ajemian: Folklords

Read "Folklords" reviewed by Troy Collins

by Troy Collins
September 18, 2014

Folklords is one of the most adventurous albums to be issued by Delmark Records since Levels and Degrees of Light, the auspicious recording debut of pianist and composer Muhal Richard Abrams in 1967. Bassist Jason Ajemian's second effort for the venerable label, following 2008's The Art of Dying, conceptually surpasses his prior work by leaps and ...

Article: Album Review

Howard McGhee: Howard McGhee West Coast 1945-1947

Read "Howard McGhee West Coast 1945-1947" reviewed by Richard J Salvucci

by Richard J Salvucci
September 18, 2014

Bebop trumpet pioneer Howard McGhee has undergone a lengthy process of rediscovery and reassessment since his death in 1987. A one-time Downbeat Poll Winner (1947), it's probably not much of an exaggeration to say he had been largely forgotten, even by trumpet players. Yet Gunther Schuller (1989) and Scott DeVeaux (1997) soon published searching and sophisticated ...

Article: Album Review

Afro Bop Alliance: Angel Eyes

Read "Angel Eyes" reviewed by Edward Blanco

by Edward Blanco
September 18, 2014

Latin Grammy Award-winning group Afro Bop Alliance lend their infectious hard-driving and percussive Latin-tinged sound to Angel Eyes, the group's fifth album staking one more claim for yet another future Latin Grammy nod. Known for their percolating percussion as well as dipping into straight ahead jazz, this Washington D.C. based octet lets the rumba rumble, the ...