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Arthur Verocai: March 15, 2009
by Chris May
Arthur VerocaiMarch 15, 2009Mochilla2010 A commercial flop on original release, and forgotten but for a cult following prepared to pay top dollar for used copies, Brazilian songwriter Arthur Verocai's self-produced debut, Arthur Verocai (Continental Records, 1972), was rereleased on the Ubiquity label in 2003. By then, the disc ...
Mulatu Astatke: February 1, 2009
by Chris May
Mulatu AstatkeFebruary 1, 2009Mochilla2010 For the first 40 years of his professional life, composer and vibraphonist Mulatu Astatke, the father of Ethio-jazz, remained practically unknown outside his own country. That changed in 2005, when his atmosphere-laden recordings were featured extensively on the soundtrack to the Jim Jarmusch-directed movie ...
Vijay Iyer: Solo
by Chris May
Pianist Vijay Iyer's Historicity (ACT Music, 2009) was among the spellbinders of its year, a 10 track trio album, one half originals, one half covers. Solo makes a return visit to the same playground, its 11 tracks comprising five originals and six covers of tunes written by Duke Ellington ("Black & Tan Fantasy," “La Fleurette Africaine"), ...
Celine Bonacina: Way Of Life
by Chris May
It may not approach the freak-show proportions of the bass saxophone Adrian Rollini popularized in the 1920s, but the baritone is still an impressive beast, one that has frequently been employed as much for its visual impact as for the notes it produces. Ever since Little Richard introduced the unwieldy instrument to his touring band in ...
State of AAJ: July 2010
by Michael Ricci
Dear fellow AAJ contributor, 2010 is shaping up to be the most important year in All About Jazz's 15 year history and I wanted to share our progress since our March newsletter.Index The State of AAJ Label Profile Assignments: Interested? Track Reviews Wanted The AAJ Store: Check Us ...
Erik Truffaz: Rendez-Vous
by Chris May
At first sight, everything is wrong about this 3CD set, recorded by the fusion and ambient trumpeter Erik Truffaz in Paris, Benares and Mexico--via a heap of international file-sharing--with help from the locals. “Wrong" like that table in the New York nightclub in 1971's The French Connection. Except that the bagmen portrayed in the movie were ...
Tom Rainey Trio: Pool School
by Chris May
Though there are more substantial things to observe about Brooklyn-based drummer Tom Rainey's Pool School, let's start by saying that the disc's hand-tinted, faux 1930s cover art is among the more stylish to have emerged so far in 2010. And even if the imagery is most immediately resonant of summer in Portugal, the Clean Feed label's ...
Philip Larkin: Larkin's Jazz
by Chris May
The author of the immortal opening couplet, “They fuck you up, your mum and dad/They may not mean to, but they do," the poet Philip Larkin (1922-85) was in 2008 voted “the greatest British writer" of the last half century by the readers of The Times. No longer the newspaper of record it was in the ...
Tribe: Message From The Tribe: An Anthology of Tribe Records 1972-1976
by Chris May
If the 1960s was the decade of sexual liberation and psycho-pharmaceuticals, the 1970s was the decade of self-empowerment and community activism, and nowhere was this more true than in black America. Musicians were among the vanguard of the activists, forming collectives to increase their leverage within the “entertainment" industry and, through education projects, to strengthen their ...
Nat Birchall: Alone In The Music
by Chris May
Two of the most over-used phrases in music journalism are “overnight star" and “out of nowhere," and so apologies for starting with them here. But when it comes to describing British saxophonist Nat Birchall, they have an unusual degree of exactitude. Birchall, born in 1957 in the rural seclusion of the hill country of North-West England, ...
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