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Evans / LaFaro / Motian: Complete Trio Recordings
by Chris May
Christmas is coming early for Bill Evans aficionados this April 2023 with the release of two box-sets. Hard on the heels of Elemental's 2-CD / 3-LP Treasures: Solo, Trio & Orchestra Recordings From Denmark 1965-1969 (reviewed here), comes this 5-CD Complete Trio Recordings set. The aptly titled Treasures is essential listening, containing as ...
Kenny Wheeler: Gnu High
by Chris May
Trumpeter, flugelhornist and composer Kenny Wheeler's exalted Gnu High, first released in 1976, is one of two albums with which ECM launches its audiophile vinyl reissue series, Luminessence, on April 28, 2023. The Luminessence mission statement is to showcase albums that have “changed perceptions of creative music making." And few would dispute this ...
Kahil El'Zabar: Quiet Shaman of Spiritual Jazz
by Chris May
Percussionist, kit drummer and composer Kahil El'Zabar founded the Ethnic Heritage Ensemble back in 1977. The group's sixteenth album, the gritty, groovecentric and exquisitely lyrical Spirit Gatherer: Tribute To Don Cherry (Spiritmusic), will be released on April 21, 2023. The Ethnic Heritage Ensemble has seen relatively few personnel changes during its long history. ...
Hummus Crisis: Banks Of The River
by Chris May
For their third album, British organ trio Hummus Crisis--guitarist Kevin M. Armstrong, organist Martin Pickett and drummer Ben Twyford--reconstruct themselves. The trio becomes a quartet with guest Alec Dankworth taking over the bass lines, and Pickett switching from organ to acoustic piano. And, in a smaller tweak, for the first time a standard, Jimmy Van Heusen's ...
Neil Ardley & Ian Carr: Authoritative Studies Of Paradigm Shifting British Musicians
by Chris May
Not-for-profit label Jazz In Britain is best known for carefully curated releases of historically important recordings made by British musicians in the 1960s and 1970s, most of them previously unavailable and sourced either from the musicians' own tape archives or those of BBC Radio. But from time to time, the label also publishes books.
Trevor Tomkins' Sextant: For Future Reference
by Chris May
A 2-CD collection of four sessions recorded for BBC Radio between 1980 and 1983, For Future Reference is a snapshot, just one of many snapshots that might be taken, of British jazz in the period immediately before the so-called “jazz boom" of the mid to late 1980s. That boom was marked by an acknowledgement of the ...
Richie Beirach: Leaving
by Chris May
On Leaving, recorded in France in 2022, Richie Beirach revisits thirteen evergreen standards, seven of them grouped together in two medleys, and two of his own compositions ("Leaving," “Sunday Song") written in the 1970s. The album is Beirach's first live solo recording since 1981. All of the material is more than familiar to ...
Bill Evans / Chet Baker / Sonny Stitt: Cold Case Investigations Strike Gold
by Chris May
Jazz detective Zev Feldman and Elemental Records have notched up more cold-case discoveries with albums by Bill Evans, Chet Baker and Sonny Stitt. The discs are scheduled for release in late April 2023, round about Record Store Day. None of the material has previously been available. All three albums are more than good and the Evans ...
Mark de Clive-Lowe, Melanie Charles, Shigeto: Hotel San Claudio
by Chris May
Lovers of Pharoah Sanders' fundamentally acoustic spiritual-jazz may experience something of a road-to-Damascus moment listening to Hotel San Claudio: the realisation that high-tech, digital-era excursions can, in the right hands, bring more than just novelty to the music. Almost half of Hotel San Claudio--a collaboration between keyboardist Mark de Clive-Lowe, vocalist and flautist ...
Fela Kuti: Coffin For Head Of State
by Chris May
From the late 1970s onward, Fela's lyrics became longer, more complex and ever more confrontational. Coffin For Head Of State, first released on Kalakuta in 1981, is an outstanding example. It is one of several albums on which Fela responded to the Nigerian army's destruction of his Kalakuta Republic compound on 18 February 1977, and focuses ...
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