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Dan McClenaghan's Best Releases of 2010
by Dan McClenaghan
These are the CDs that never roamed away from the current listening shelf. Jessica Williams Touch Origin Records Masterpiece isn't a word to be tossed around lightly. Jessica Williams, with the eighty-eight piano keys and a lifetime of musical immersion, has created one with this recording.
Wadada Leo Smith / Ed Blackwell: The Blue Mountain's Sun Drummer
by Dan McClenaghan
The Blue Mountain's Sun Drummer is a set full of brash, in-your-face spontaneity, which is a meeting of expectations when the musicians at hand are trumpeter/multi-instrumentalist Wadada Leo Smith and the late drummer, Ed Blackwell. Smith's contribution to the free jazz cannon stretches back to his days with Chicago's Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians ...
Christian Weidner: The Inward Song
by Dan McClenaghan
On The Inward Song, German alto saxophonist Christian Weidner has crafted music that defies categorization more than most--a slippery sound in terms of tagging it with descriptive phrases. Weidner employs a quartet this time out, following up the trio effort of his first Pirouet Records release, 2004's Choral. This new foursome is a remarkably cohesive ensemble, ...
The Dave Liebman Group: Turnaround: The Music of Ornette Coleman
by Dan McClenaghan
2010 has been a busy year for Dave Liebman, though not always one in which the saxophonist sits in the featured chair: he is the horn man on Contact's highly collaborative Five in One (Pirouet Records, 2010), a superb all-star outing; sits in on half of rising star Bobby Avey's A New Face (Jay Dell Records, ...
Thomas Marriott: Constraints and Liberations
by Dan McClenaghan
Trumpeter Thomas Marriott keeps growing as an artist. He has released CDs at a healthy pace since 2005: an introduction for many perhaps unwary jazz fans to some warped country western flavor on Crazy: The Music of Willie Nelson (Origin Records, 2008); cranking an all-star quintet up in a modern mainstream mode on Flexicon (Origin Records, ...
Pete Malinverni Trio: A Beautiful Thing
by Dan McClenaghan
The great tenor saxophonist Coleman Hawkins once said: [music]...if you don't make mistakes you're not really trying." Pianist Pete Maliverni seems to have taken this statement to heart, going into the studio with his working trio--bassist Lee Hudson and drummer Eliot Zigmund--to record A Beautiful Thing, producing a music full of inspired flexibility, much like what ...
Nik Bartsch's Ronin: Llyria
by Dan McClenaghan
On Stoa (ECM Records, 2005), Nik Bärtsch's Ronin offered up music made with a clock-like precision. Zen Funk, Ritual Groove Music--take your pick of descriptive tags--was meted out by a machine-like ensemble, using repetition and reduction and space sparked by the leader's punctuating, crystalline piano notes underlain, a great deal of the time, by a bass/contrabass ...
Vijay Iyer: Solo
by Dan McClenaghan
Pianist Vijay Iyer may be one of the great ones; only time will tell. The pianist has risen to become a critics' darling, mostly on the basis of his quartet outings, including the much-lauded Reimagining (Savoy Jazz, 2005) and Tragicomic (Sunnyside Records, 2008). He's worked a trio magic, to, -with his piano/saxophone/drums Fieldwork group, on the ...
Rich Halley Quartet: Live at the Penofin Jazz Festival
by Dan McClenaghan
Like the very best of them, every time Rich Halley puts his horn in his mouth it's a celebration of the sound of the saxophone. His powerhouse blowing capacity and testosterone-soaked sound hearken to the great Sonny Rollins and the late Dewey Redman. His ensemble approach featuring two horns--cornet and saxophone, supported by bass and drums ...
Ladies of Jazz: All Female Jazz Singer/Songwriters Concert
Four of the San Francisco Bay Area's top Jazz Singer/Songwriters are featured in a concert of jazz standards and originals. Performers include Jennifer Lee, Melissa Dinwiddie, Cathi Walkup, and Leanne Weatherly. Backing them will be David Udolf on piano and Paul Smith on bass. Jennifer Lee is a vocalist/pianist/guitarist with a warm, lovely voice, extraordinary musicality, ...

