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Aisha HR NYC Trio: A-Symmetry
by Chris May
Still barely known outside her native Italy, Aisha HR's debut album announces the arrival an arresting young pianist in the Bill Evans/Herbie Hancock lineage. One of the finalists in an Italian piano competition presided over by Enrico Pieranunzi, HR (formerly Ruggieri) came to jazz following extensive classical training in Amsterdam, Rome and Venice. In the US, ...
Hank Mobley: Dippin'
by Chris May
Hank Mobley spent most of 1964 banged up for drug offences. The year of the Beatles' US breakthrough, which sounded the final death knell for hard bop as a mainline music of inner city youth, happened beyond Mobley's eyes and ears. Is it too fanciful to suppose he barely noticed it happening? Probably yes. But it ...
Pat Martino: Remember: A Tribute to Wes Montgomery
by Chris May
The safest course of action on encountering a tribute album is usually to run like hell in the opposite direction. Which is why this beautiful album stayed unplayed for a couple of weeks before finally, thank God, finding the deck. This recording is just lovely. If Wes Montgomery was alive today, this is almost certainly what ...
Nik Bartsch's Ronin: Stoa
by Chris May
From out of nowhere, Switzerland--best known in the jazz community for hosting the increasingly irrelevant Montreux Jazz Festival, whose headliners for 2006 include Simply Red, Solomon Burke, Deep Purple, Sting and Bryan Adams--seems suddenly to be turning out some seriously intrepid and innovative young players. In the space of a few weeks, we've been introduced, first, ...
Bruise: Bruise With Derek Bailey
by Chris May
A breathtaking, deep-space adventure in sonic exploration, Bruise With Derek Bailey documents the last British concert given by free improvisation auteur Derek Bailey. The performance presents the veteran guitarist with a lineup some one or two generations younger than himself, playing alongside heirs to the tradition he helped create in the 1960s and 1970s. It is ...
Cannonball Adderley: Great Sessions
by Chris May
A less cohesive and chronologically compact collection than the others in Blue Note/Capitol's new budget priced Great Sessions series, Cannonball Adderley's set offers a potpourri of three albums recorded for Blue Note, Riverside and Capitol between 1958 and 1966, charting the saxophonist's trajectory from blues-drenched Charlie Parker disciple to soul-jazz pioneer. The cream in the coffee, ...
Nguyen Le Duos: Homescape
by Chris May
Where does jazz stop and world music start? The boundaries are getting more blurred by the minute. We're all postmodernists now, and many musicians under fifty reflect a range of influences beyond those traditionally associated with their own core style. Some, like French-Vietnamese guitarist Nguyen Le, are so polyglot as to be practically beyond category. Le ...
Blake Wilner Quartet: Interloper
by Chris May
At the risk of being guilty of national stereotyping, I have to say that London-based Australian expat Blake Wilner's guitar playing reminds me of Russell Crowe. Wilner may or may not enjoy pitching mobile phones at hotel receptionists, or rounding off an evening's drinking with an invigorating bar room brawl, but he brings the same lurching ...
Lou Rawls: The Best Of Lou Rawls: The Capitol Jazz & Blues Sessions
by Chris May
Although they're included almost as a postscript to this gorgeous collection of jazz and gospel-inflected blues, the last three tracks on The Best Of Lou Rawls are headline news in themselves. Three previously unissued tracks featuring legendary trumpeter Dupree Bolton!! Almost as under-recorded and unchronicled as Buddy Bolden, Dupree Bolton spent most of his adult life ...
Wayne Shorter: Great Sessions
by Chris May
Blue Note is adept at finding fresh ways of repackaging its back catalogue--the label has to be, because in not so many years time, every dodgy operator on the planet will be able to punt the music out, in any permutation they fancy, unconstrained by copyright restrictions. Blue Note Europe's new Great Sessions series is a ...
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