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Alla Boara's Italian Christmas at Trinity Cathedral
by John Chacona
Alla Boara Trinity Cathedral Cleveland, OH December 6, 2024 Here in North America most of our Christmas traditions have origins in northern Europe. So the notion of an Italian Christmas might be hard to visualize. Santa filling stockings while eating biscotti and gulping down an espresso then merrily riding off on ...
John Chacona's Favorite Jazz Albums of 2024
by John Chacona
First the bad news: There are too many recordings being released these days. In the past 12 months, I have received or purchased 769. That's insane. Now the good news: There are a great many very good recordings being released these days. The following 10 are a snapshot, on one day, of my favorites ...
D.D. Jackson: I Call
by John Chacona
"I Call," is a poem about the immigrant's dilemma of identifying with two places but fully inhabiting neither, using the refrain, “a place that doesn't exist" to name this condition. Yet Quebec-born Toronto poet Choucri Paul Zemokhol's family came to Canada from the Middle East, a place that, even in the interval since the poem's publication ...
Glenn Zaleski: Opus de Funk
by John Chacona
We don't hear enough about Horace Ward Martin Tavares Silver these days. With a centennial arriving in 2028, now's the time--anytime is the time--to dig the very hip tunes composed by this godfather of hard bop. And that's just what pianist Glenn Zaleski does on Star Dreams (Sunnyside, 2024). “Opus de Funk" is one of Horace ...
Bill Charlap Trio: The Man I Love
by John Chacona
Fellow geezers might remember how, in an item describing the atmosphere at New York City's fabled Rainbow Room, The New Yorker's Goings On About Town section sniffed “where a club soda costs about ten dollars," or words to that effect. The Rockefeller Center boîte is no longer open to the public and the Goings On section ...
Ken Peplowski: All the Things You Are
by John Chacona
Even if you are new to jazz, you have likely heard “All the Things You Are" dozens of times, maybe hundreds. But you have never heard it like this. Jerome Kern's tour through the circle of fifths, catnip for improvisers, is usually played as a mid-tempo stroll or faster, but it was written as a ballad ...
Brian Landrus: AGRA
by John Chacona
The palette of Duke Ellington, jazz's first notable colorist--and arguably its greatest--drew on a range of instrumental hues that might still be unmatched in jazz history. Picking one as the essential pigment in the Orchestra's sound is a fool's errand. But here goes: it was Harry Carney's baritone saxophone, without which the Ellington sonic signature is ...
Farahser: Flatland
by John Chacona
As Farahser, Torontonians John Kameel Farah, a classically trained pianist, and drummer/producer Nick Fraser roam the frontier where improvised and notated music meet. It is well traveled territory these days, but on their eponymous release these sonic explorers find a borderland between memory and legend, imagination and investigation. Echoes of the Palestine of Farah's ancestors ripple ...
John Escreet: Departure No. 1
by John Chacona
When you first listen to “Departure No. 1," from John Escreet's The epicenter of your dreams (Blue Room Music, 2024), you might well ask, Who wrote that? At once familiar but tantalizingly hard to pin down, the composition sounds like a Bud Powell tune or maybe an undiscovered Herbie Nichols gem, perhaps in an edition by ...
Nicola Caminiti: Adam Arturo
by John Chacona
Every generation or so, a rhythm section comes along and changes the game. Think of Count Basie's “All-American Rhythm Section" with Freddie Green, Walter Page and Jo Jones, or Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter and Tony Williams from Miles Davis' second great quintet. It's up to history to render the verdict about pianist Lex Korten, bassist Ben ...
