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Natsuki Tamura / Satoko Fujii: Keshin
by Dan McClenaghan
The Covid-19 virus tightened its grip on the world in 2020, bringing the old “one door closes, another one opens" trope to mind. The door into touring, to presenting music in live venues, slammed shut. But the extra time afforded by the lack of live music opportunities let the recording studio doors swing wide open--especially in ...
Tony Bennett and Janis Joplin 2: Tony and Janis 2 Got Dem Ol' Kozmic Blues Again Mama
by Dan McClenaghan
It was twenty years ago today (or more accurately, twenty years prior to the studio date for this recording) that the Ensenada, Baja California-based Loma Alta Life Extension foundation cloned Joplin Joplin, using the detritus obtained from one of the singer's hair brushes to bring a genetically identical replica to life. The Second Janis puts to ...
Julie Sassoon: If You Can't Go Outside...Go Inside
by Dan McClenaghan
American novelist and short story writer Stephen King has said that he thinks his stories are “found things, like fossils in the ground...relics, part of an undiscovered pre-existing world." He goes on to say that, as a writer, it is his job to reveal as much of this fossil as he can. Interesting, and maybe true. ...
The David Restivo Trio: Arancina
by Dan McClenaghan
The David Restivo Trio's Arancina is all about “home," whether it is pianist Restivo's ancestral home in Sicily, projected with a beautifully-painted homage on his four-part “Sicilian Suite," or his brief home in Nova Scotia with “Raven's Wing," inspired by the dark birds soaring over the Northumberland Strait which separates Nova Scotia from Prince Edward Island. ...
Jazz Night At The Oceanic Brew Pub, Part 3: How You Loved Me On Mars
by Dan McClenaghan
The Oceanic Brew Pub's waitress, Rafaela, told the owner, Roy Leahy, not to hire that dumb ass pianist and his chihuahua again to play on Jazz Night. But Roy ignored her. The place had gotten a lot of publicity out of the duo's previous engagement, when pianist Sinbad Rindowski's howling vocal accompanist chihuahua, Sweetie Pie, damned ...
Roberto Magris & Eric Hochberg: Shuffling Ivories
by Dan McClenaghan
You cannot get a sound that is more dead-center-of-the-U.S.A than pianist Roberto Magris and Eric Hochberg's Shuffling Ivories. This makes sense geographically as the disc comes from Kansas City's JMood Records, the label that seems intent on recording everything that Magris has to offer, including the pianist's 2020 magnum opus, Suite. Born in Trieste, ...
Alexa Tarantino: Firefly
by Dan McClenaghan
The twenty-first century sees many of us talking to a cloud-based artificial intelligence: “Alexa, play my music." And so she does. The time frame also sees the emergence of a talented human Alexa--Alexa Tarantino, who plays her music, on Firefly, the woodwindist's third album release on Posi- Tone Records, an evolutionary leap forward— conceptually and compositionally—from ...
Satoko Fujii: Hazuki
by Dan McClenaghan
Going back to the early 1960s, consider Brian Wilson, of Beach Boys fame. And consider his song “In My Room" (with lyrics co-written with Gary Usher), issued as a single and included in the 1963 album Surfer Girl (Capitol Records). It is a sound of loneliness, a poem to a sanctuary, a place that makes it ...
Jazz Night At the Oceanic Brew Pub, Oceanside, California, Part Two: I Don't Stand A Ghost Of A Chance With You
by Dan McClenaghan
Juanita Diaz-Johnson haunted the house piano at the Oceanic Brew Pub. The baby grand had been hers, when she was alive. But when she passed in December 2020, at age 79, another victim of the Coronavirus, her older daughter Evangeline penciled the piano in for a spot at the estate sale. But Rafaela, Juanita's younger daughter, ...
Yelena Eckemoff: Adventures of the Wildflower
by Dan McClenaghan
The seeds of pianist-composer Yelena Eckemoff's Adventures Of The Wildflower were planted in 2013, when she traveled to Hollola, Finland, to record Blooming Tall Phlox (L&H Productions, 2017) with a group of young Finnish musicians. Several Eckemoff albums came about after that recording, but the experience with her Finnish friends must have exerted a sort of ...
