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Article: Multiple Reviews

Pretenders: Deluxe and Then Some

by Doug Collette
December 25, 2021

In the cover photos of the first two Pretenders albums, vocalist, guitarist and chief composer Chrissie Hynde looks like her best songs sound: forthright, earnest and without affectation. That she and the quartet possess those virtues as they play, both in the studio and on-stage, is testament to their chemistry. No vinyl LPs are included to ...

Article: Six Picks

December 2021

by Pat Youngspiel
December 15, 2021

Johannes Luley Follow Your Heart My Sonic Temple 2021 The likes of of Eberhard Weber, Ralph Towner, John Abercrombie and Kenny Wheeler are closely linked, not only musically but most of all because a majority of their recordings was released on ECM Records. They're also quite the musicians to look up ...

Article: Multiple Reviews

Wadada Leo Smith: 80 Years Strong

by Doug Collette
December 12, 2021

The celebration of trumpeter/composer Wadada Leo Smith's 80th birthday milestone year culminates with yet another four-CD box set plus a proportionately sumptuous single-disc package. Both sets include extensively-annotated booklets with background on the graphics of the package as well as the music itself, with a thorough attention to detail reflective of the Mississippi native's boundless drive ...

Article: Multiple Reviews

Gordon Grdina: Prolific Independent

by Doug Collette
December 12, 2021

The more Gordon Grdina works, the more clearly he follows his own course(s) of action. Following in fairly short order the releases of the Nomad Trio (Skirl Records, 2020) and a septet effort, Resist (Irabbagast Records, 2020), the guitarist/oud master initiates his own label imprint, Attaboygirl Records, with two simultaneous releases (and another to come in ...

Article: Multiple Reviews

Willie Nile, Howlin' Rain and Divine Horsemen: Hey Hey, My My...

by Doug Collette
December 11, 2021

Whether or not Neil Young was being ironic or sarcastic in 1979 when he intoned ...'rock and roll can never die...' the descriptive musical term may indeed be outdated after so many years of arbitrary categorizations, hyphenates and glib marketing labels like 'Americana.' Yet that eclectic mix of roots, often referred to as 'mongrel music,' still ...

Article: Multiple Reviews

Satoko Fujii: Aural Abstracts

by Doug Collette
December 10, 2021

Pianist/composer Satoko Fujii had already released one of the year's most notable albums Piano Music (Libra Records, 2021) by the time Underground and Mosaic came out. And yet these two titles, conceived and executed in markedly different ways, reaffirm the woman's ingenuity as much as her prolific nature (along with close to another handful of records ...

Article: Multiple Reviews

The Persistence of Big Bands

by Geno Thackara
December 4, 2021

It's faintly amazing to be able to talk at all about big-band recordings--plural--emerging during an ongoing pandemic with no end in sight. Nonetheless it's a milieu that still enjoys plenty of devotion, and musicians (especially jazz players) are no strangers to realizing ideas that seem practically impossible. Here we have scores of them willing to keep ...

Article: Multiple Reviews

New Spins On Old Masters

by Jerome Wilson
November 22, 2021

Dave Brubeck and Charlie Parker were two of the most influential jazz figures of their eras. Many musicians have interpreted their work over the years but these two albums take more liberties than usual with their compositions to good effect. Mark Zaleski Band Our Time: Reimagining Dave Brubeck Origin Records

Article: Multiple Reviews

Vince Guaraldi’s Classic Peanuts Soundtrack Music Reissued on LP

by Mark Sullivan
November 18, 2021

When television producer Lee Mendelson heard jazz pianist/composer Vince Guaraldi's hit single “Cast Your Fate to the Wind" on his car radio, he thought he had found the right composer for the soundtrack to the documentary on Charles Schultz's cartoon series Peanuts that he was working on. Guaraldi indeed turned out to be the perfect man ...

Article: Multiple Reviews

3x3: Piano Trios: November 2021

by Geno Thackara
November 16, 2021

Ayumi Tanaka Trio Subaqueous Silence ECM Records 2021 Ayumi Tanaka isn't kidding with this impressionistic title. The music here isn't very far removed from silence, and its ebbing and drifting has just the formlessness you'd expect from life at the bottom of a sea or lake. Pretty sparse and abstract ...