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Alan Shorter: Mephistopholes To Orgasm Revisited
by Chris May
It is often said of a musician, be they alive or no longer with us, that they deserve to be better known. This is emphatically true of the wayward trumpeter and composer Alan Shorter, who was overshadowed during his lifetime by his brother, Wayne Shorter, and who continues to be passed over today in 2024.
Andrew Nixon, Ed Croft, Joe Goretti: Outside Agitators
by Chris May
In winter 2021, seemingly out of nowhere, pianist and composer Andrew Nixon brought a ray of sunlight to those fortunate enough to happen upon his debut album, the self-produced In Congruence. A review can be read here. A little research revealed that Nixon was a resident of Buffalo, NY, from whose university he had graduated with ...
Alex Hitchcock: Dream Band Live In London
by Chris May
Viewed in retrospect, the abiding memory of 2023 is that it produced too many jazz albums prioritizing technical facility over emotional engagement. In London, New York and elsewhere (but not, so it seemed, in Chicago), musicians appeared to focus on virtuosity rather than feeling. Dullsville. For the record, some of those albums that did put soul ...
Bill Evans: The Legendary Trio At Birdland 1960 Revisited
by Chris May
Thank you, Boris Rose. The obsessive New York jazz maverick set out to record every musician of note who performed in the city's clubs from the mid 1940s through the mid 1970s. He must have come close to succeeding. His vast accumulated horde of tapes--today presumed more or less safe, stacked floor to ceiling in a ...
Sandy Bull: Blend
by Chris May
Long before the description “world music" had been coined, the outward-looking guitarist and oudist Sandy Bull laid it out with drummer Billy Higgins on the Vanguard albums Fantasias For Guitar And Banjo (1963) and Inventions (1965), which blended jazz, Levantine, Caribbean, Brazilian and rock music. The mesmerising “Blend" is the 22-minute opening track on Fantasias.
Martin Iaies featuring Julian Arguelles: New Beginnings
by Chris May
Born in Argentina but resident in Graz, Austria since 2019, Martin Iaies' aptly titled New Beginnings is the guitarist's second album, following Rewind & FF (El Club del Disco, 2018). And it is a zinger. In Graz, Iaies completed formal guitar studies in 2022, and recorded New Beginnings the same year. He leads ...
Reggie Quinerly: The Thousandth Scholar
by Chris May
The Thousandth Scholar is Los Angeles-based drummer and composer Reggie Quinerly's fifth album, each out on his Redefinition label. Quinerly themes his albums. His debut was Music Inspired By Freedmantown (2012), a tribute to the Houston neighborhood where he was born and raised. It was followed by Invictus (2015), a salute to hard bop, Words In ...
Ingi Bjarni Skúlason: Farfuglar
by Chris May
Appropriately enough for an album on NXN, a subsidiary of classical label Naxos, which only relatively recently diversified into jazz, the Icelandic pianist Ingi Bjarni Skúlason's Farfuglar spans both traditions. Is it classical? Is it jazz? Both? Neither? Check the YouTube below and decide for yourself. Whatever it may be, Skúlason's music is ...
