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Lenny Breau & Brad Terry: The Complete Living Room Tapes
by Elliott Simon
Guitarist Lenny Breau's short life (1941-1984) is a movie waiting to be made. Before his still unsolved murder, he was able to bring a new voice to the guitar by adapting country fingerpicking technique to the intricacies of modern jazz. A Breau hallmark was his highly developed ability to play bass, chords and single notes concurrently ...
Burton Greene: Calistrophy
by Elliott Simon
The latest offering from pianist Burton Greene, Calistrophy, is a curious blend of klezmer, blues, swing, free form, Latin, Balkan and plain old straight ahead jazz. Greene, a founding member of the '60s cutting edge Free Form Improvisation Ensemble, was, with his group Klezmokum, also among the first to reacquaint contemporary jazz with klezmer. Joining Greene ...
Patrick Zimmerli: The Book of Hours
by Elliott Simon
A crisp brass alarm announces the dawning of a new day in composer Patrick Zimmerli's The Book of Hours, a musical cycle that proceeds through the seven medieval daily periods of worship. In place of spoken prayer, interspersed allusions to Coltrane's A Love Supreme serve as sacred moments. Soprano saxophonist Zimmerli, guitarist Ben Monder, and the ...
Pivot and Paths
by Elliott Simon
Knitting Factory New York City 2/22/2003 Saxophonist/flautist Thomas Chapin was a New York Knitting Factory musical founding father. Almost 5 years to the day from his untimely death, the Pivot Quintet, featuring some of Chapin’s closest musical associates in guitarist Michel Musillami and bassist Mario Pavone, held forth at the Knit’s “Old ...
Playscape Recordings
by Elliott Simon
A jazz label that fosters development of a group “gestalt" is rare these days; but Playscape Recordings, led by guitarist Michael Musillami, is doing just that. Armed with the late Thomas Chapin's musical dream of compositional creativity coupled with genre transcending excellence, Playscape is connecting the dialectics of classical with jazz and the mainstream with the ...
Roswell Rudd: MALIcool
by Elliott Simon
West African Manden music is no stranger to Western ears, and much has been made of its close similarity to American blues. On Malicool, Roswell Rudd transports his singular trombone to West Africa for an adventurous session with Malian kora player Toumani Diabate, who is among the world’s best on the instrument. The kora is a ...
Roberto Juan Rodriguez: El Danzon De Moises
by Elliott Simon
The Cuban rhythmic roots of percussionist Roberto Juan Rodriguez’s, El Danzon De Moises (Tzadik), are not in Afro-Cuban bongo/conga stylings. They lie instead in the statelier Euro-Cuban danzon and folksier Spanish-Cuban guajira modes. While the graceful guajira is guitar based Eastern Cuban folk music, danzon’s ancestry is in the cultured French contradanza that arrived in Cuba ...
Solomon and Socalled: Hip Hop Khasene
by Elliott Simon
Billed as a marriage of fiddle and microphone, Hip Hop Khasene unites traditional Jewish klezmer dance music with contemporary DJ beats and mixes. The bride is Sophie Solomon, AKA London Jungle DJ Starets and resident violinist for klezmer band Oi-Va-Voi that features drum n’ bass and house along with traditional melodies and rhythms. The groom is ...
Terry Gibbs: Terry Gibbs Plays Jewish Melodies in Jazztime
by Elliott Simon
A klezmer band quickly transitions out of a vibe-based jazz quartet. Is this the latest in downtown fusion projects? No. It is the CD release of 1963's Terry Gibbs Plays Jewish Melodies in Jazztime. Terry is the remaining member of the Gibbs-Hampton-Jackson-Norvo “Big Four," whose collective work helped transform the vibraphone from a novelty into a ...
Jason Rosenblatt and Shtreiml: Harmonica Galitzianer
by Elliott Simon
Diatonic Harmonica CDs are certainly not on many jazz fans “Best of” lists. As designed, it is not a jazz instrument and is more at home with straight blues or country. Players like Toots Thielemans use a chromatic harp in order to go beyond second position and get that jazzy feel. Recently, Howard Levy and John ...
