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Rudresh Mahanthappa / Steve Lehman: Dual Identity
by Glenn Astarita
Alto saxophonists Steve Lehman and Rudresh Mahanthappa are prime forces and motivators for the new jazz; artists who can boast impressive resumes as leaders, and first-call session champions that assist with surging the modern jazz element into diagonally opposed schemas. Dual Identities is a fascinating glimpse of what happens when two saxophonists merge their respective styles ...
Times 4: Eclipse
by Glenn Astarita
San Francisco Bay Area quartet Times 4 finely tunes its compositional prowess on Eclipse. Sparked by snappy pulses, and memorable hooks, the unit attains an attractive balance between radio-friendly jazz and several instances of serious-minded improvisation. At times strutting its stuff, the quartet imparts a stylistic up-tempo rendition of sax great John Coltrane's timeless classic, “Naima."
Kush: Streams of Consciousness Volume Two
by Glenn Astarita
There are no hidden agendas behind this Canadian electronics-oriented band. As stated on the ensemble's website, the music aims to please via a feelgood type manifesto, where jazz, house music, ethereal musings and solid instrumentation coalesce into a fastidiously assembled package. Marked by wah-wah trumpet lines, steady beats and layered effects, the ensemble looms as groove ...
Simon Nabatov: Roundup
by Glenn Astarita
With venerable band mates generating a sympathetic framework, Russian-reared/New York City-based pianist Simon Nabatov re-fabricates ambiances into slightly fragmented story lines on the superb Roundup. Featuring semi-structured tone poems spiked with dissonance, budding grooves, and intriguing dialogues among the players, Nabatov opens with a transcendent melody on “Sunrise, Twice."The pianist's cascading chord voicings and ...
Norbert Stein Pata, Horns & Drums: Silent Sitting Bulls
by Glenn Astarita
German saxophonist Norbert Stein's hefty discography surrounds French journalist Alfred Jarry's pseudoscience of pataphysics amid many existential relations of art, life and human imagination. With his various Pata-based ensembles, Stein's music intimates comprehensive manipulations of jazz and world music. Organic, yet equipped with brute force tactics, the saxophonist's compositions boats a native stylistic component, hugely evident ...
Scott Lee: Leaving
by Glenn Astarita
Scott Lee is a bassist who sports a persuasive compositional pen. An educator, session ace, and solo artist, Lee and his constituents impart a highly-rhythmic slant on the progressive-jazz vernacular amid a few intermittent nods to the avant-garde spectrum throughout Leaving. His quartet instills a rite of passage, chocked full of nifty theme-building exercises, intriguing harmonic ...
Ralph Alessi: Cognitive Dissonance
by Glenn Astarita
The jazz community welcomes trumpeter Ralph Alessi's keen compositional and superior technical skills. As a solo artist and first-call session ace, Alessi is adept at fusing disparate jazz-related styles into a singular voice. With his Cam Jazz debut, the trumpeter executes a diverse, polytonal environ, featuring laudable and like-minded jazz instrumentalists--a band that spins a symmetrical ...
Greg Ward's Fitted Shards: South Side Story
by Glenn Astarita
Saxophonist Greg Ward's moderately esoteric spin on jazz signals an artist who has traversed diverse paths, including stints with electronica artist Prefuse 73, and stalwarts of progressive jazz, such as drummer Hamid Drake and saxophonist Von Freeman. Here, Ward compiles a textural and hard-hitting modus operandi, largely evidenced on “Step Forward." This piece is dabbled with ...
Trey Gunn / Marco Minnemann: Modulator
by Glenn Astarita
Touch guitar ace Trey Gunn composed this album based upon Marco Minnemann's 51-minute Normalizer 2 drum solo. Thankfully, this is not a bash fest; instead, the drummer's rhythmic foray features odd-metered polyrhythmic episodes and textural cymbal swashes amid a cavalcade of salient percussive concepts.The preponderance of the largely, contiguous tracks do indeed pronounce a ...
Dennis Rea: Views from Chicheng Precipice
by Glenn Astarita
Seattle-based guitarist Dennis Rea discloses a 360-degree U-turn, contrasting his work with the hemi-powered progressive rock and jazz fusion bands, Iron Kim Style and Moraine. Rea's Asian-derived fusion--of rock, avant-garde, Asian folk and Western classical concepts--spawns a translucent and rather kaleidoscopic genre-busting sequence of musical events.The album opener “Three Views from Chicheng Precipice (after ...
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