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Cassandra Wilson: Loverly
by Chris May
Cassandra Wilson's Loverly is amongst the singer's most straight-ahead and stripped down albums since her debut for Blue Note fifteen years ago with Blue Light 'Til Dawn (Blue Note, 1993). Self-produced, and recorded in a rented house in her hometown of Jackson, Mississippi with little artifice, simple arrangements and a great sound, Wilson and a core ...
Various Artists: New York Is Our Home
by Chris May
One of four themed, double-CD compilations from the Blue Note vaults released in the same month--the others are African Rhythms (1960s hard bop homages to Africa), The Funk Jazz Brothers (early 1970s funk-jazz) and On The Corner (early 1970s fusion)--New York Is Our Home brings together twenty tracks recorded by Blue Note artists between 1953-58 which ...
Various Artists: African Rhythms: Afro-Centric Homages to a Spiritual Homeland
by Chris May
One of four themed, double-CD compilations from the Blue Note vaults released in the same month--the others are New York Is Our Home (dealing with emergent hard bop), The Funk Jazz Brothers (early 1970s funk-jazz) and On The Corner (early 1970s fusion)--African Rhythms brings together 17 tracks recorded by Blue Note artists between 1957-70 which paid ...
David Liebman & Ellery Eskelin: Renewal
by Chris May
When saxophonists Dave Liebman and Ellery Eskelin got together to make Different But The Same (Hatology, 2003), it seemed a strange partnership--Liebman, the Jedi master of structure and changes, and Eskelin, best known for gutsy free improv. But the album title proved to have been well chosen, and the two players showed that a lot more ...
Outhouse: Outhouse
by Chris May
The two tenor saxophone-led Outhouse quartet are members of London's Loop Collective of musicians, a younger sibling of the city's pioneering F-ire Collective. Both collectives are focused on the exploratory, culturally inclusive and on occasion brutally iconoclastic end of the jazz spectrum, and between them they've put forward some of the most exciting British jazz of ...
Bobby Hutcherson: Head On
by Chris May
A brilliant addition to Blue Note's Connoisseur series, Head On not only resuscitates vibraphonist Bobby Hutcherson's fascinating but obscure 1971 album of the same name, it also--with 43 minutes of previously unissued material--reveals another album altogether, made during the second half of the same three-day session, of the same high quality but with a markedly different ...
Depart: Mountain Messenger
by Chris May
The histories of the players who make up the powerhouse trio Depart are distinguished, but give only a small clue to the nature of the music they offer on Mountain Messenger or its predecessor, Reloaded (ACT Music, 2006), the group's debut. Austrian saxophonist Harry Sokal and the Swiss rhythm team of bassist Heiri Kanzig ...
Christine Tobin: Secret Life of a Girl
by Chris May
Three years--and a lifetime--in gestation, Secret Life of a Girl is an album London-based singer/songwriter Christine Tobin spoke about when she gave an interview to AAJ in autumn 2005. At the time, Tobin was touring in support of Romance and Revolution (Babel, 2004), the sixth own-name disc she'd recorded since 1995 and, like its predecessors, a ...
Jon Balke: Book of Velocities
by Chris May
On paper, Norwegian pianist Jon Balke's first solo album reads like challenging stuff: a collection of eighteen short improvisations, grouped into five sub-sections (four chapters" and an epilogue"), and concerned as much with the velocities with which the piano's strings can be struck--and how they can be struck--as with thematic or harmonic development. Something for fellow ...
Marcin Wasilewski Trio: January
by Chris May
With January, pianist Marcin Wasilewski, bassist Slawomir Kurkiewicz and drummer Michal Miskiewicz step out of the benign shadow of their mentor, trumpeter Tomasz Stanko--on whose Soul Of Things (ECM, 2001), Suspended Night (ECM, 2003) and Lontano (ECM, 2005) they were featured accompanists--and confirm the mighty promise of their international solo debut, Trio (ECM, 2005).


