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Results for "Geno Thackara"
Jon Stickley Trio: Point to Point
by Geno Thackara
Cross Nickel Creek with Bela Fleck and the Flecktones and you'll start getting close to Jon Stickley's neighborhood--but there's still a lot more in there to discover once you make your way around town. The JS3 starts with folk/bluegrass instrumentation (acoustic guitar/violin/drums) and adds dashes of anything from math-prog to Latin or Celtic, while the dazzling ...
3x3: Piano Trios: May 2023
by Geno Thackara
We're still wandering all over the place here; from abstract to groovy and back again, or sometimes some of both at once. Little North Wide Open Self Produced2023 This Scandinavian outfit figuratively wanders farther into the wilds every time around, it seems--their style doesn't have many traces of traditional ...
Maria Baptist: Essays on Jazz
by Geno Thackara
If a title such as Essays on Jazz might suggest something dry or academic (or, god forbid, pretentious), perish the thought. For one thing, Maria Baptist has spent decades as a professor of music and knows her stuff enough to live up to the name. For another, she has spent even more time living the jazz ...
GoGo Penguin: Everything Is Going to Be OK
by Geno Thackara
There is clearly something different about GoGo Penguin on their sixth full-length: where they've previously had a pattern of evocative titles and vaguely futuristic abstract covers, this one (at first glance) looks and reads almost like a greeting card. This also comes after one-third of the trio changed with 2022's interim EP, Between Two Waves (Sony/XXIM). ...
Haeun Joo: We Will Find
by Geno Thackara
You can read a lot into the simple phrase We Will Find," and befitting such a title--especially for a debut--Haeun Joo sounds equal parts exploratory and hopeful. The jazzy grooving and trading of solos is familiar as can be, while her wordless crooning adds a more exotic allure at the same time. Strange and charming.
Torben Westergaard: Jazz Brazil
by Geno Thackara
For Torben Westergaard, sooner or later all roads lead back to Brazil. The special flavor of South American jazz shaped his life from an early age, and has stayed a recurring staple in his music from his debut Brazilian Heart (Self Produced, 1996) through the Tangofied (Gateway) series of 2013-17. If it's taken him a while ...
Marvin Blague: Epistrophal Astronomy: The Hidden Code of Thelonious Monk
by Geno Thackara
If you've ever wondered what planet Thelonious Monk came from, you are not alone. According to Marvin Blague, you're not wrong to wonder either. Like most jazz listeners, he was not sure what to make of Monk's clunky-sounding playing style on first listen. But where many of us gradually come to enjoy how the pianist used ...
Playing the Beatles (Again)
by Geno Thackara
How to present some of these oh-so-familiar songs yet again? With a catalogue as universally known as The Beatles,' the best guideline would seem to be the more reinvention, the better. Everyone involved in these tributes, fortunately, seems to agree. Rubber Soul Quartet Something Losen Records 2023 In ...
Derek Brown: Whatever the Case May Be
by Geno Thackara
From his social-media-famous trick of analogue beatboxing to here, literally, beating on a box, Derek Brown never runs short on tricks. Just as importantly, those fun little ideas aren't gimmicks but building blocks to be used in ways both clever and musical. Whatever the context, the sonic coloring is just the topping while there's always a ...
Kevin Hays & Lionel Loueke: Feuilles-O
by Geno Thackara
One pianist with a naturally soulful touch (and a fairly rich crooning voice to boot), one guitarist with innate Afro-rhythms running through everything he does; they still make a myriad of tones for just two guys with no special effects. 2019's Hope (Edition Records) had no shortage of highlights, but their take on this sweet/sad Haitian ...


