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Article: Liner Notes

Patrick Brennan and sOnic Opening: Tilting Curvaceous

by Howard Mandel
March 16, 2023

Tilting Curvaceous is all-of-a-piece, s0nic 0penings' instigator and extraordinary alto saxophonist Patrick Brennan informs us, emerging from a single “meta-groove interface," to be heard whole. That may come naturally to fans of creative improvisation since the breakthroughs of Ornette Coleman, say, and new constructions by composers including Cecil Taylor, the Art Ensemble of Chicago, Henry Threadgill ...

Article: Liner Notes

Klaus Kugel: Op Der Schlemz Live Nemu

by Howard Mandel
March 6, 2023

The collective quartet performance Op Der Schlemz Live by drummer Klaus Kugel pianist Roberta Piket, saxophonist Roby Glod and bassist Mark Tokar is rooted in steady balance yet full of dynamic surprises. Most people approaching this record will understand in advance that's a good thing, since surprises are exactly what we hope for when music is ...

Article: Liner Notes

Ornette Coleman: Ornette At 12 / Crisis

by Howard Mandel
March 5, 2023

Ornette Coleman, the musical savant who freed jazz and every other art form that cared to dispense with stifling conventions and stultifying pretense, recorded Ornette at 12 and Crisis at the height of the 1960s' countercultural creative promise and world-wide unrest. It was an era of citizens claiming hard-won freedoms as civil rights, of ...

Article: Liner Notes

Josie Falbo: You Must Believe in Spring

by Howard Mandel
February 28, 2023

The first moments of Josie Falbo's You Must Believe in Spring sweep us into a lush soundscape, through a cinematic introduction, up close and intimately to her marvelous voice. Her voice is full, rich and pure top to bottom, fluid and shapely as anything imaginable, imparting true faith into lyrics valuing a lifetime's experience, acceptance, appreciation ...

Article: Liner Notes

Elma Kais: Licentia Poetica

by Howard Mandel
February 26, 2023

I tried to write words freed from rhythm... Yet the song came, of itself, in the right measures, And whatever I tried to write was poetry. Ovid, Tristis IV, 24-25 More than 2000 years ago Ovid captured the essence of spontaneous improvisation in a stanza--as the collective of Elma Kais, Knox Chandler, Daigo Nakai ...

Article: Liner Notes

Charnett Moffett: The Bridge

by Howard Mandel
February 23, 2023

Solo bass records are rare, and might seem to appeal mostly to bassists and bass aficionados. But on The Bridge Charnett Moffett, the charismatic bass virtuoso with an impressive past and equally brilliant future, has proven here without benefit of a band--that his music can touch anyone who loves music, regardless of instrumentation or genre. ...

Article: Liner Notes

Greg Lewis' Organ Monk: American Standard

by Howard Mandel
February 18, 2023

Thelonious Monk was an American original, a unique figure of his time and place. So is Greg Lewis, organist at the helm of Organ Monk, which on American Standard expands upon its mission of interpreting Monk's own compositions, just as Monk did himself. American Standard, Organ Monk's third album, takes up classic songs from ...

Article: Liner Notes

Reggie Nicholson: No Preservatives Added

by Howard Mandel
February 17, 2023

From cosmic gong signaling it's “Time to Reset" to bluesy combo asking that we “Say It Ain't So," Reggie Nicholson's Percussion Concept on No Preservatives Added makes music of real life and sonic imagination. Beats, breathes, cycles, syncopations and synchronizations--dances, stances, gestures, textures—rhythmic physicality and melodic extrapolation--expressive, engaging improvisations of a masterful team, that proceed by ...

Article: Liner Notes

Bob Albanese: Time Remembered

by Howard Mandel
February 15, 2023

Everything we remember is time past. How those memories live anew in the present is the subject of Time Remembered, pianist Bob Albanese's beautifully rendered solos and collaborations with bassist Eddie Gomez, drummer Willard Dyson, percussionist David Meade and (briefly on one track) “Furmina the Wonderdog." “It's a record of feeling which I hope ...

Article: Extended Analysis

Tommy Flanagan / Jaki Byard: The Magic Of 2

by Dan Bilawsky
March 21, 2013

San Francisco's famed Keystone Korner shuttered its doors in 1983, but it's getting more press today than plenty of clubs that are still serving up jazz. In the past two years alone, a previously unreleased live recording of trumpeter Freddie Hubbard--Pinnacle (Resonance, 2011)--launched Resonance Records' Keystone Korner Live Discoveries series, photographer Kathy Sloane released Keystone Korner: ...