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6

Article: Album Review

Ulysses Owens Jr. Big Band: Soul Conversations

Read "Soul Conversations" reviewed by Jack Bowers

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 ...

8

Article: Album Review

The Spike Wilner Trio: Aliens & Wizards

Read "Aliens & Wizards" reviewed by Jack Bowers

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 ...

6

Article: Album Review

Phill Fest: Cafe Fon Fon

Read "Cafe Fon Fon" reviewed by Jack Bowers

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 ...

4

Article: Album Review

Barry Deister Quintet: Crows - The Portland Images Project

Read "Crows - The Portland Images Project" reviewed by Jack Bowers

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 ...

19

Article: Album Review

John Hasselback III: Entrance

Read "Entrance" reviewed by Jack Bowers

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 ...

6

Article: Album Review

Joanie Pallatto: My Original Plan

Read "My Original Plan" reviewed by Jack Bowers

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 ...

7

Article: Album Review

Dan Rose, Claudine Francois: New Leaves

Read "New Leaves" reviewed by Jack Bowers

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 ...

5

Article: Album Review

Glenn Close/Ted Nash: Transformation

Read "Transformation" reviewed by Jack Bowers

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 ...

6

Article: Album Review

Ben Patterson: Push The Limits

Read "Push The Limits" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers

It took no more than a quick Google search to find that every member of trombonist Ben Patterson's quintet is (or was) also a member of the U.S. Air Force's flagship jazz ensemble, the Airmen of Note. On Push the Limits, Patterson challenges his fellow airmen to cruise through ten of his elaborate compositions and arrangements, ...

5

Article: Album Review

Amit Friedman: Home at Last

Read "Home at Last" reviewed by Jack Bowers

by Jack Bowers

Once upon a time, jazz, an American creation, was confined for the most part within its borders. But that was once upon a time. Today, any barriers that once kept jazz within a prescribed realm have long since vanished, and the music Americans once embraced as their own has flourished around the world, performed with increasing ...


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