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Dreams And Dust: Two From Pianist Izumi Kimura
by Ian Patterson
2025 will go down as a busy year for Ireland-based, Japanese pianist Izumi Kimura. The first half of the year served up the solo album Butterfly Effect (Codama Records) and Glacial Voyage (Between The Lines)--the latter a free-form duo collaboration with guitarist Christy Doran. Both albums favored explorations of mood and textures over virtuosity. Two further ...
Josh Rosen: Beneath the Radar
by Steve Plever
They say that a college teaching gig has become the new record contract. Pianist Josh Rosen's 30+ years on the Berklee College of Music faculty have indeed made a career in music possible, but the downside is that without record label promotion, few outside of Boston have heard of him. Perhaps this review of two of ...
Ryan Lee Crosby, Kent Burnside and Garry Burnside: Blues As A Way Of Life
by Doug Collette
The eternal appeal of the blues lies in the attraction it holds to successive generations of musicians and music lovers. And such connections are not necessarily grounded in blood relations, as is the case with Kent and Garry Burnside, but also in the bonds of mentorship as with Ryan Lee Crosby: while there are more than ...
Vince Guaraldi’s Charlie Brown: Jazz Impressions and Good Sport
by Mark Sullivan
Everyone knows the Vince Guaraldi soundtrack A Charlie Brown Christmas (Fantasy Records, 1965). However, Guaraldi composed and performed music for many other Peanuts-related projects, two of which have been recently released. They represent the beginning and end of the journey: Jazz Impressions of a Boy Named Charlie Brown was recorded in 1964, one year before the ...
Opa and The Blackbyrds: Coveted 1970s Jazz-Funk
by Mark Sullivan
Opa released only two albums before disbanding in the early 1980s. While neither of their albums found commercial success during their initial releases (despite the high-profile personalities involved), both titles gained underground followings over the following decades. The Blackbyrds' City Life celebrates its golden anniversary. “Happy Music," the dancefloor-ready title track and the group's heavily sampled ...
Grateful Dead: The Music May Never Stop
by Doug Collette
The keepers of the Grateful Dead vault, overseen by chief archivist David Lemieux, must have been hard pressed to adequately commemorate the sixtieth anniversary of the iconic band's formation. After all, the recognition of the half-century milestone a decade ago found the curators homing right in on the most distinctive aspects of the group's thirty-year history ...
Matthew Shipp: On The Ascent
by Doug Collette
The simultaneous release of two markedly different efforts documents pianist/composer Matthew Shipp's arguably inevitable ascent into the upper echelons of contemporary jazz. The man's rise to prominence has been inexorable to be sure, but all the more laudable for the slow but steady nature of his journey. As such, the arc of Shipp's career not surprisingly ...
Phil Haynes: Electricity Incarnate!
by Doug Collette
In the annals of jazz both short-term and long, the influence of drummer-led initiatives is immeasurable. There is Art Blakey and his Jazz Messengers, of course, plus Tony Williams' Lifetime and, in addition, numerous single-minded efforts like these two coincidental releases of Phil Haynes. Each is a largely freewheeling exercise in revisitation gestated during COVID lockdowns: ...
Kory Reeder and John Cage albums on Another Timbre set pulses running
by John Eyles
The two albums below have plenty in common with one another. Both feature compositions by Americans played by Apartment House, a UK-based ensemble who are featured on Another Timbre often enough to be considered the label's house band. The eight Cage compositions heard here were all composed between 1943 and 1951, earlier than Cage's 1952 silent ...
The Song Poetry of Torhild Ostad and Kazzrie Jaxen
by Jakob Baekgaard
While many singers interpret songs, few elevate them into song poetry--a fusion of lyricism and phrasing that transcends genre. This rare quality emerges when voice, words, and musical interplay coalesce into something greater than the sum of their parts. It is a phenomenon found in the recent albums by Norwegian vocalist Torhild Ostad and pianist-singer Kazzrie ...
