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Julie Sassoon Quartet: Voyages
by Mike Jurkovic
As on a high speed, downhill slalom chase, listeners are suddenly, nakedly and without poles hurled into “Missed Calls"; the opening burst of sublime energy and groupthink cracks Voyages wide open, sets the mad, determined pace and tone for a craftily organic, six-song, free-jazz adventure which never lets up. It is breakneck rhythm churning, keening, into ...
Mike Jurkovic's Best Recordings of 2021
by Mike Jurkovic
Once again we give thanks to the artists that kept us real. Kept us sane. Kept us from going off the rails like the whole rest of the reality around us. Fortunately there was so much more than this. Here is the music that hit in a big way and that stays foremost on the radar. ...
Enrico Rava: Edizione Speciale
by Mike Jurkovic
At the time of this fascinating live gig from 2019, trumpeter/flugelhornist/composer/mentor Enrico Rava, at 80 years of age, hadn't lost his knack for catching you off guard. Take “Infant" from Edizione Speciale as a prime example and let the rest of the disc sweep you off your perceptions. “Infant" emerges from a lone Rava ...
Craig Taborn: Shadow Plays
by Mike Jurkovic
Recorded with stunning clarity of sound and a brave vision, at Vienna's Mozart-Saal of the Wiener Konzerthaus in March 2020, Craig Taborn's visceral variations on a theme and quixotic poetics rise and fall majestically on Shadow Plays, a bold, fully-rendered successor to his last solo ECM outing Avenging Angel (2011) The rapturously inquisitive Taborn ...
Christian McBride & Inside Straight: Live at the Village Vanguard
by Mike Jurkovic
You may feel a whole lot better about things after checking out Live at the Village Vanguard. Now, without argument or scholarly discourse, that can be said for any of the time honored performances captured under that heady title, but here it's Christian McBride and Inside Straight and seriously, this one has fun written all over ...
Harold Mabern: Mabern Plays Coltrane
by Mike Jurkovic
As is too often the case, we gain more and more respect and insight into an artist after he or she has passed away. Harold Mabern may have been overshadowed by many of his peers but he remained true to himself: bringing to the music a Memphis-bred hard bop blues and flourishing as both sought after ...
John Coltrane: A Love Supreme - Live In Seattle
by Mike Jurkovic
John Coltrane was moving faster than the speed of sound in 1965. Besides divining his place within the music, the world, his God, he was touring; a two week gig with Thelonious Monk at the Village Gate led to Newport then into a frenetic week in Europe. With the classic quartet plus Archie Shepp, Art Davis ...
Hiromi: Silver Lining Suite
by Mike Jurkovic
What's really super cool about Silver Lining Suite is that if you listen to it while engrossed in your daily blessings or misgivings, the music plays like one of those old movies where everyone had something to say but the technology, unlike today, lagged behind our capacity to hear it. All you heard was the theater's ...
Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers: First Flight to Tokyo: The Lost 1961 Recordings
by Mike Jurkovic
Perhaps Art Blakey's greatest gift was that he was able to—and also enabled you—to transport through time to when invention was new and not reheated, rebranded, or far worse, rejected out of hand. Just take his opening solo on the Charlie Parker-penned opener “Now's the Time" from the absolutely ribald and raucous First Flight To Tokyo: ...
Adam Nolan: Prim and Primal
by Mike Jurkovic
Whether stalking the perimeters or cutting to the bone, Irish alto saxophonist Adam Nolan's full throated assault on alternative facts takes you by storm on his fourth (and hopefully breakthrough) disc, Prim and Primal. Like Ornette Coleman, like Anthony Braxton, Nolan and his fellow non-shy improvisors—bassist Derek Whyte and drummer Dominic Mullan—keep the music ...
