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BEL Trio: Beyond Rivers
by Jack Bowers
Recording a guitar-and-rhythm trio can be a tricky proposition. First, the guitarist, who carries almost every melody, must be well-spoken and easy on the ears. Second, the bass and drums, if that is the format, must be supportive but not intrusive. Third, the music must be for the most part bright and engaging. And finally, the ...
The Echo Park Project: It's My Turn
by Jack Bowers
There is an abundance of salsa and soul (soulful salsa?) on It's My Turn, the sixth recording by conguero Carlo Lopez's Los Angeles-based Echo Park Project. Most of the sunny, light-hearted music was written and arranged by Joe Mannozzi (the one exception is bassist John Belzaguy's “Can't Complain"). “These tunes," Lopez says, “are for listeners and ...
Ulysses Owens Jr. Big Band: Soul Conversations
by Jack Bowers
Drummer Ulysses Owens Jr.'s Big Band comes out swinging on its debut recording, Soul Conversations, thundering through Michael Dease's incendiary arrangement of the Dizzy Gillespie/John Lewis flame-thrower, “Two Bass Hit." For more such heat, however, the listener must move forward to Track 5, John Coltrane's impulsive “Giant Steps," thence to Track 9 for Charles Turner III's ...
The Spike Wilner Trio: Aliens & Wizards
by Jack Bowers
Spike Wilner, generally noted in his native New York City as an excellent jazz pianist, is even more widely known as proprietor of two of the city's leading jazz clubs, Smalls and Mezzrow. Though hard hit by the Covid-19 pandemic, Wilner has soldiered on, presenting live music whenever possible and forming the SmallsLIVE Foundation, a non-profit ...
Phill Fest: Cafe Fon Fon
by Jack Bowers
While there is no sure cure for the blues, a large dose of Brazilian music often comes about as close to driving the dark clouds away as any remedy a physician is likely to prescribe. It is hard to listen to an album such as guitarist-composer Phill Fest's sunny Café Fon Fon without smiling and tapping ...
Barry Deister Quintet: Crows - The Portland Images Project
by Jack Bowers
Crows, a new recording by saxophonist Barry Deister's quintet, embodies a series of tone poems designed to depict in musical terms various features of the area in and around Portland, Oregon--a locale that Deister and his colleagues call home--as part of the Portland Images Project. Their themes range from ephemeral ("Winter Wind," “Fog," “Cascade Sunrise") to ...
John Hasselback III: Entrance
by Jack Bowers
Entrance, New York-based trumpeter John Hasselback III's debut recording, is basically a quintet date on which Hasselback shares the front line on four tracks each with saxophonist Wayne Escoffery or trombonist Steve Davis. If one is known by the company he keeps, that's a rather persuasive frame of reference. Hasselback wrote every number save one, the ...
Joanie Pallatto: My Original Plan
by Jack Bowers
"Give my new disc a spin," Chicago-based vocalist Joanie Pallatto e-mailed. “I think you'll like it." That was more than twenty years ago, and Pallatto was right. That album, Words & Music (Southport Records, 1999), was splendid, as was Pallatto, reciting memorable lyrics by Rodgers & Hart, the Gershwin brothers, Antonio Carlos Jobim, Hoagy Carmichael, Bob ...
Dan Rose, Claudine Francois: New Leaves
by Jack Bowers
On New Leaves, their second recording together, longtime friends and sometime colleagues guitarist Dan Rose and pianist Claudine Francois focus their talents on making beautiful music together, a plan whose success is self-evident but whose single-mindedness could leave some listeners wishing for greater variety. That's not meant to berate, as beauty needs no defense, but simply ...
Glenn Close/Ted Nash: Transformation
by Jack Bowers
When confronted by an album whose tracks include the names “Creation" (Parts 1 and 2), “Preludes for Memnon," “Wisdom of the Humanities" and “Reaching the Tropopause," among others, one braces for whatever may transpire, buoyed by the thought that with Glenn Close, Ted Nash and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra on board, how displeasing could ...
