Results for "Mike Jurkovic"
Alonzo Demetrius: Live From The Prison Nation

Drummer Ralph Peterson's righteous mission is the continuum of late mentor Art Blakey with the all cylinders burn of the Messengers Legacy performances and twenty-five recordings, including 2020's charismatic Onward & Upward (Onyx Productions). He chooses trumpeter Alonzo Demetrius as his first label mate to help bring the even larger legacy of the black movement forward. ...
The John Goldsby Trio: Segment

Let's humor one another and just say that it's the hardest of the hard core who won't find themselves swept up in this snazzy little tart of a disc. It's music that gives you enough rope to range and get your chores done but holds you always in its easeful sway as the world is in ...
Sonny Rollins: Rollins in Holland

From the very first decibel of this unrealistically good, previously unreleased recording, Sonny Rollins bears no bones to inform listeners he is suffering no fools. It is a big, Buescher, bellwether sound, the one that gave Rollins the sound and spirit he needed to tell of a man taking it all on without apology. It is ...
Ivan Kapec 5tet: Crta

From the start, this one promptly pulls listeners into its jumpy orbit with its antic, gravitational bass line and percussion hijinks as Croatian baritone guitarist Ivan Kapec begins to separate, distinguish and mark out what is chaos from what we tell ourselves is organized space. Talk about a mission simultaneously fraught and ripe with possibility! That ...
Lisa Hilton: More Than Another Day

It's very comforting to know that, as Annus Horribilis (2020) crashes to its long awaited, cursed demise, pianist/composer Lisa Hilton delivers, as she has faithfully over the past few years, a year-end gift to aficionados everywhere with her soulfully bluesy More Than Another Day. When you consider all our anxious caution for the year ...
Mike Jurkovic's Best Releases Of 2020

Here we are on the heels of Annus Horriblis still clinging to traditions both minuscule and grand like year end best of lists. So in the spirit of the season and survival, here's a 2020 playlist. Listen to these in this order or random play and perhaps the year in retrospect won't appear so damn bad. ...
Charles Mingus: @ Bremen 1964 & 1975

It is 1964 and the big bass emperor rules the old continent as he commanded every stage he set foot on. So @ Bremen 1964 & 1975 just does not sound right. Charles Mingus Swings Bad Ass and Liberates Your Body and Your Mind @ Bremen sounds way more like it. Foras much as anything in ...
The Dave Brubeck Quartet: Time OutTakes

When, for the first and the millionth time Paul McCartney is queried by lazy savants and crazed fans about what he would have cut from epic double White Album (Apple, 1968) to make it the strongest of the strongest single disc ever, the cutely weathered one just replies It's the Beatles' bleedin' White Album, man" and ...
George Coleman: In Baltimore

At 85, tenor saxophonist George Coleman has sat in on and made his presence mightily known on a host of flat out, hard bopping sessions beginning with B.B. King through Max Roach, Miles Davis, Booker Little, Lee Morgan, Herbie Hancock and . . . well, you should have got the larger picture by now.
Keith Jarrett: Budapest Concert

Burdened as it is by the news that, due to two strokes suffered in 2018, Keith Jarrett's glorious art of live composition is all but over, Budapest Concert has some serious heavy lifting to do. Triumphant and transcendent, it rises to the grand occasion and leaves the listener marveling at how any artist, of any age, ...