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Jakob Bro: Live at The Village Vanguard
by Fran Kursztejn
Legendary guitarist Jakob Bro revitalized the pensive romanticism of the ECM Records sound with last year's Taking Turns, and continues his crusade in Live at the Village Vanguard. His strategy is simple: a diverse cast, both in style and generation, slavishly dedicated to a dynamic trajectory, like a viscous alloy rushing violent in an aged riverbed. ...
Pat Thomas: Sufi Women
by Fran Kursztejn
Virtuoso pianist Pat Thomas released one of the finest (and most frustrating) solo performances of this decade with 2024's The Solar Model of Ibn Al-Shatir (Otoroku), and follows with a no-less important, intimate coda in Sufi Women. “Dedicated," as Thomas proclaims, “to the remarkable contribution of Sufi women in the spiritual science...known as Sufism (Islamic mysticism) ...
Dimitris Zafeirelis: Dimitris Zafeirelis & Giorgos Gavalez Duo Jazz Parafono 1997
by Fran Kursztejn
Dimitris Zafeirelis has enjoyed well-earned acclaim in his hometown of Athens as one of the foremost guitarists, jazz composers and musical innovators his country has to offer. He has been active for at least half a century, playing everything from bop, fusion, classical, operetta and rock, all with that distinct national flavor and unrelenting style which ...
Sven Åke-Johansson: Two Days at Cafe OTO
by Fran Kursztejn
Sven Åke-Johansson's death in 2025 felt distinctly like a chapter closed. There is a cliche in Jazz to characterize players of a certain class and longstanding influence as “youthful" or otherwise endlessly inventive despite multi-decade, multidisciplinary careers. Its excessive use is justified by elements of the medium's own construction and history. Jazz itself appears to be ...
Joe Santa Maria & David Tranchina: Oblique Rhyme
by Fran Kursztejn
The integral development of post-'70s jazz has nothing to do with instruments, playstyle or compositional ethos. After bop's heyday slowly petered out, its practitioners either holding strong to the tradition or scattering to other genres in the public's favor, the necessity of a studio-produced, hierarchical set seemed to disappear with it. Granted, the bandleader model maintains ...
Manfred Schoof: European Echoes
by Fran Kursztejn
Manfred Schoof's European Echoes is popularly characterized as a diamond in the rough, with emphasis on the rough. Boasting a cast filled with near every mainstay of the erupting European free jazz style, amounting to 16 independent players, most awarded their own solo, duet or section improvisation in the record's second half, audio technology of the ...
Jaki Byard: Blues For Smoke
by Fran Kursztejn
If Jaki Byard is most commonly categorized as a proud progenitor of the 'new jazz,' as his seminal work with Eric Dolphy on Outward Bound and Charles Mingus on Black Saint and the Sinner Lady would suggest, then a record like Blues for Smoke may throw listeners for a loop. Byard's notoriously difficult to pin down--a ...
Helge Albin: Homemade
by Fran Kursztejn
If the word “fussy" occasionally rears its head when relating the Helge Albin Quintet's newest release, it is not meant as a slight. Albin--an undeniable staple of the Swedish and wider North European jazz scene--is nothing if not insatiable. Before the quintet's founding, he led the impressive Tolvan Big Band, certainly Sweden's most ambitious musical project ...
Rob Brown: Walkabout
by Fran Kursztejn
Despite spending the majority of his career as a side man for William Parker and Matthew Shipp, Rob Brown is perhaps the most recognizable alto saxophonist on the East Coast. Recognizable not because he is famous (far from it), but simply because he is rather difficult to mistake. His sound is abrasive, bellowing and free, oozing ...
Mahakala Music: Murmuration
by Fran Kursztejn
"Birds from the east coast meet birds from the midwest," reads Mahakala Music's description for saxophonist Dave Sewelson's newest release. Sewelson himself is a bicoastal phenomenon: born in Oakland, then traipsing into the New York scene circa 1977. Like his frequent bandleader collaborator William Parker, he acts as a magnetic center to attract a variety of ...
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