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Milton Nascimento / Esperanza Spalding: Milton + esperanza
by Chris May
Sometimes the semiology around an album can tell you more about it than any amount of words attempting to describe the music itself. And the semiology around Milton + esperanza is eloquent. It begins with the overlap with another summer 2024 release, Wayne Shorter's magical double-album Celebration Volume 1 (Blue Note), a previously unreleased recording of ...
Madeleine Peyroux: Let's Walk
by Chris May
Madeleine Peyroux's career took off in 2004 with her second album, Careless Love (Rounder), covering songs by such 20th century greats as Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan and Hank Williams. It was performed with a jazz sensibility, infusions of blues and touches of chanson, and mostly with jazz arrangements. In this respect, it continued the direction set ...
Pat Metheny: Bright Size Life
by Chris May
Reissued as part of ECM's 180gm-vinyl audiophile Luminessence series, Bright Size Life was originally released in 1976 and features Pat Metheny leading his then regular touring trio completed by bassist Jaco Pastorius and drummer Bob Moses. It is a lively and lovely album and rediscovering it should be a delightful experience for anyone who has perhaps ...
WHO Trio: Live At Jazz Festival Willisau 2023
by Chris May
This jewel of an album was released just too late for inclusion in AAJ's Best Jazz Albums of 2024: All-Star Break Edition, where contributors were invited to name their three best albums released during the first half of the year (the article can be read here). But five gets you ten that it will be included ...
Madeleine Peyroux At Barbican Hall
by Chris May
Madeleine Peyroux Barbican Hall Let's WalkLondon July 21, 2024 In the early 1990s, still a teenager, US-born Madeleine Peyroux was a member of the Paris-based buskers The Lost Wandering Blues And Jazz Band led by the singer and raconteur Danny Fitzgerald. Peyroux cut her professional teeth travelling around Europe with ...
Norma Winstone, Kit Downes: Outpost Of Dreams
by Chris May
Any release by Norma Winstone is an event and Outpost Of Dreams, her much anticipated first album since 2018's Descansado (Songs For Films) (ECM), rises to expectations. It presents her in a new duo setting with pianist Kit Downes, a star in his own right who is equally on point as an accompanist. His sensitive, empathetic ...
137: Strangeness Oscillation
by Chris May
More comebacks than Sinatra? Well, not really, given that this is the first one, but the return of the beyond-category British saxophonist and flautist Larry Stabbins after an eleven-year absence is headline news. In 2013, Stabbins (a.k.a. Stonephace) very publicly announced that he was beyond disgusted with the music business in general and the jazz business ...
Huw Warren: Choro Choro Choro
by Chris May
The Welsh pianist Huw Warren is not a household name--though he ought to be--so a little background to Choro Choro Choro is appropriate, just in case the album is taken to have effervesced out of nowhere. In the 1990s, Warren was co-leader of the singular London quartet Perfect Houseplants. The group's half-dozen albums ...
Pat Metheny: MoonDial
by Chris May
Pat Metheny was first encountered in this parish in the autumn of 1982, promoting Offramp (ECM), released earlier in the year. He was making a London stopover on the tour which produced the live album Travels (ECM, 1983). Interviewed at Kensington's Royal Garden Hotel, where his well-worn denim stood him out from the generally snooty clientele, ...
Alex Hendriksen: Lotus Blossom
by Chris May
There is a story, possibly apocryphal, about a young tenor saxophonist who, after some arm twisting from a friend, was persuaded to venture on to the bandstand and join in a jam session alongside Coleman Hawkins. Afterwards the player was asked by his friend whether he had enjoyed the experience. “It was OK," he said, “but ...
