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Orlando le Fleming & Romantic Funk: Wandering Talk
by Chris May
Wandering Talk is the second part of a project from British bassist Orlando le Fleming which began with Romantic Funk: The Unfamiliar (Whirlwind, 2020). The album convincingly brings together the acoustic jazz tradition and the lush but muscular electric fusion which emerged in the 1980s. Not for nothing is one of le Fleming's heroes, paid tribute ...
Albert Ayler / Don Cherry: Albert Ayler With Don Cherry 1964 Recordings First Visit Completed
by Chris May
It is possible that in his liner notes for this album, Brian Morton has unraveled the riddle that is Albert Ayler. Was he a genius? A hoaxer? An outsider artist before the term was coined? A person in the grip of autism? An avant-gardist who decided to become a (whisper it) populist? A religious evangelist? A ...
Jasmine Myra: Rising
by Chris May
The British alto saxophonist, flautist and composer Jasmine Myra is based in the north of England, which is far enough away from London to have its own distinctive jazz scene, much of which is in the ambit of auteur, trumpeter and producer Matthew Halsall, who founded the Manchester-based Gondwana label in 2008. More about this can ...
Trondheim Jazz Orchestra & Espen Berg: Maetrix
by Chris May
Lana and Lilly Wachowski's The Matrix (1999)--an inspiration for Norwegian pianist and composer Espen Berg's Maetrix--divides opinion. The movie is regarded by some, including one assumes Berg, as a prescient masterpiece addressing the existential threat posed to humanity by digital technology. Others say it is pretentious twaddle. No worries. Discord is unlikely to ...
Jerome Sabbagh: Heart
by Chris May
AAJ occasionally publishes reviews which call out the barbarism of digital-only albums (Heart is not one of these, please hang on in there). Item: the review of Brazilian saxophonist and flautist Vinicius Mendes' Macunaismo Tardio Vol. 1&2 (Notes On A Journey, 2024). The two albums collected on that vinyl double-LP, blinders both, were originally released separately ...
Remembering All About Jazz's Dave Binder / John Kelman
by AAJ Staff
It is with great sadness that All About Jazz must announce the death of Dave Binder, better known to millions of readers as John Kelman. Dave died of a heart attack on August 10th, after a long bout of illness. For twenty years Dave was the most internationally renowned of all AAJ's contributors, penning over 2,700 ...
John Alvey: Loft Glow
by Chris May
Such is the proliferation of albums which in the 2020s are taking jazz in new and exciting directions--see AAJ's Best Jazz Albums of 2024: All-Star Break Edition round-up here--that it is easy to pass over albums which have their feet firmly planted in the tradition, and which show no ambition to redefine it, but which are ...
Sam Braysher: That's Him: The Music Of Kurt Weill
by Chris May
On his first two albums under his own name, London-based alto saxophonist Sam Braysher focused on the Great American Songbook. On this, his third album, he takes a sideways look at mid-twentieth century American popular music through the work of German-born, naturalized American composer, Kurt Weill. Braysher, whose warm tone and consonant and inquisitive approach to ...
Wayne Shorter: Celebration Volume 1
by Chris May
In 2000, three years short of entering his eighth decade on this planet--a place of origin which at times seemed questionable, though he made less fuss about it than Sun Ra--Wayne Shorter finally did what he had resisted doing throughout his career. He formed his own band, not just for an album project but as an ...
Roberto Roema Y Su Apollo Sound: Roberto Roema Y Su Apollo Sound
by Chris May
Britain has been enriched by immigrants from many parts of the world, but people arriving from Spanish-speaking Central America and the Caribbean have been relatively few in number, and far less visible. So in the late 1960s and early 1970s, when salsa edged out of Spanish Harlem towards the US mainstream, Britain was mostly left out ...
