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Article: Album Review

Volcan: Volcan

by Dan Bilawsky
December 12, 2013

Whenever a musician strikes out on their own by forming their own label they're addressing the issue of control and consolidation. Pianist Gonzalo Rubalcaba went one better when he created 5passion. He consolidated, took control, and diversified his offerings. First came Fe (5passion, 2011)--a sanctified solo piano date that All About Jazz's Dan McClenaghan rightly called ...

Article: Year in Review

Dan McClenaghan's Best Releases of 2013

by Dan McClenaghan
December 12, 2013

Lots of extraordinary music. These are my picks for outstanding CDs of the year. Keith Jarrett/Gary Peacock/Jack DeJohnette Somewhere ECM Records Pianist Keith Jarrett's “Standards Trio," with bassist Gary Peacock and drummer Jack DeJohnette, recorded Somewhere live in 2009. After thirty years together, the group is still growing. This will ...

Article: Album Review

David Bennett Thomas: Headspace

Read "Headspace" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
December 11, 2013

Pianist David Bennett Thomas is a bit of a Renaissance guy when it comes to music. A gifted composer of classical and choral, chamber and orchestral music, he also veers on occasion into the jazz world. He brings to jazz a cerebral approach that is also engaging on a purely kick-back-and-listen level. It is with repeated ...

Article: Album Review

Jane Ira Bloom: Sixteen Sunsets

Read "Sixteen Sunsets" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
December 8, 2013

Sidney Bechet pioneered the use of the soprano saxophone in jazz in the early 20s. John Coltrane brought that “straight horn" out of a relative dormancy of use in 1959 with his anthem-like take on Rodgers and Hammerstein's “My Favorite Things" on his Atlantic Records album of the same name. Steve Lacy took the soprano “out ...

Article: Album Review

Myra Melford: Life Carries Me This Way

Read "Life Carries Me This Way" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
December 1, 2013

Pianist Myra Melford's first solo disc, Life Carries Me This Way, is a musical exploration the paintings of California visual artist Don Reich. Rendering a painting--an art form that can be taken in at once, with one look--and addressing its moods, colors, shapes and textures over the course of a composition is not a easy task. ...

Article: Album Review

John Stowell/Dave Liebman: Blue Rose

Read "Blue Rose" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
November 14, 2013

Saxophonist Dave Liebman joined guitarist John Stowell and bassist Don Thompson on three tunes on Stowell's The Banff Sessions (Origin Records, 2002). More than a decade later, Stowell and Liebman have teamed up on a duo outing, Blue Rose. The two artists' take on a bunch of jazz standards and Great American Songbook tunes has a ...

Article: Album Review

Ted Rosenthal Trio: Wonderland

Read "Wonderland" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
November 7, 2013

Lots of “Christmas Albums" come out every year. Many of them are nice for an easy holiday listen, but let's face it, expectations are low in terms of endurance, and they can often be rightfully seen as quickly done, quick buck affairs. Then there are the ones that have endured: the Vince Guaraldi Trio's A Charlie ...

Article: Album Review

Arno Haas: Magic Hands

Read "Magic Hands" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
October 31, 2013

Could it get any funkier than this, any deeper into the groove? It's doubtful. Saxophonist Arno Haas has, with Magic Hands, crafted a sound that's as tight and danceable as anything that James Brown's Famous Flames conjured back in the late 1960s and early 1970s. “You Better Watch Out," a blast of fusion, opens ...

Article: Extended Analysis

Enrico Pieranunzi: Live at the Village Vanguard

by Dan McClenaghan
October 29, 2013

Italian jazz pianist Enrico Pieranunzi, with his melodic romanticism and wondrous sense of harmony, deepened by by his classical training, gets compared often and aptly to the legendary and game-changing pianist Bill Evans (1929-1980). While Pieranunzi's style is more gregarious, and less introspective than that of Evans--and often more abstract--he does share with the late piano ...

Article: Album Review

David Sills: Blue's the New Green

Read "Blue's the New Green" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan

by Dan McClenaghan
October 27, 2013

Saxophonist David Sills opens his Blue's the New Green with tenor sax titan Sonny Rollins' tune, “No Moe." But Sills doesn't use Rollins' musculature or his burly tone. He rolls more in the mode of sax men Joe Henderson or Stan Getz--or, to take it back further, Coleman Hawkins or Ben Webster, with a smooth, vibrato-less ...