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Smooth Elevator: Walking through the Suburbs of Rome Late at Night
by Ludovico Granvassu
In the midst of Italian bassist Danilo Gallo's busy release schedule, Moving Target stands out. Released on the Norwegian label Losen Records, the album showcases Smooth Elevator, the trio Gallo co-leads with guitarist Will Bernard and drummer Gioele Pagliaccia since 2011. Together, they fuse a downtown New York edge with an unmistakably Italian cinematic ...
Peter Epstein Quartet: In Your Voice
by Mike Jacobs
It could be said that jazz, at its best, is a confluence of musical personalities that form a unified collective spirit, brought forth with immediacy. Peter Epstein's “In Your Voice" epitomizes this ethos with remarkably empathetic and stylized performances from the saxophonist, Jamie Saft, Chris Dahlgren and Jim Black. This is further amplified by the one-point, ...
Fabia Mantwill Orchestra: Whirl the Wheel
by Ludovico Granvassu
German saxophonist Fabia Mantwill is also an adventurous composer and arranger for large ensembles. Her new album, In.Sight, is her most ambitious to date--a wide-ranging and deeply imaginative project recorded with the Fabia Mantwill Orchestra, which features a vibrant mix of young players from Berlin's buzzing jazz scene. The album also marks Mantwill's debut ...
Jon Batiste & Randy Newman: Lonely Avenue
by Ludovico Granvassu
Enjoy this soulful take on Doc Pomus' “Lonely Avenue"--a song immortalized by Ray Charles, the patron saint of Jon Batiste's musical world. To make this single an even more compelling preview of his upcoming album Big Money, Batiste enlisted a fellow Ray Charles devotee, the legendary Randy Newman. Though Newman has kept a lower ...
Daniel Casimir: Balance
by Carl Medsker
The dynamic London underground jazz scene has produced a stellar roster of innovative musicians over the last decade or so. Shabaka Hutchings, Nubya Garcia, Binker Golding, Moses Boyd and Theon Cross, to name a few, meld bebop, hip hop, grime, reggae, dub, calypso, afrobeat and classical musics into fresh, novel hybrids. Bassist and rising star Daniel ...
Majid Bekkas, Nguyên Lê, Hamid Drake: Boom Boom
by Ludovico Granvassu
At a time of daunting provincialism and tribal regression, jazz remains one of the few welcoming oases for the globally minded. If you're one of then, enjoy this track, feauturing a Moroccan oud and guembri player--and vocalist--Majid Bekkas, a Franco Vietnamese guitarist, Nguyen Le, and a living legend of the Chicago scene like drummer ...
Rikard From: Sun of June
by Scott Lichtman
Pianist and songwriter Rikard From may get 360,000 listeners per month on Spotify, but I suspect a larger, as-yet-unaware audience would benefit from a thorough listen of his music. His primary sound combines the maj6/9 embellishments of Bruce Hornsby with the rollicking gospel of Keith Jarrett on a song like “God Bless the Child." His body ...
Christian McBride Big Band with Sting and Andy Summers: Murder by Numbers
by Ludovico Granvassu
It seems that Sting revisits “Murder by Numbers" with once-in-a-lifetime collaborations as a way to comment on the corrupt pulse of the times. He did so in 1988--as a pointed response to televangelist Jimmy Swaggart's claim that the song was “written by the devil"--with Frank Zappa on the stage of Chicago's Auditorium Theater, after ...
Pino Palladino & Blake Mills: Taka
by Ludovico Granvassu
Believe it or not, it has already been four years since Pino Palladino and Blake Mills released Notes with Attachments. The good knews for those, like me, who have been eagerly waiting for a follow up to that sonic flying carpet, is that the wait is over. Almost. Impulse! Records is about to release Palladino and ...
Ella Feingold & Charlie Hunter: Sanford N’ Anybody
by Ludovico Granvassu
Here is music from an album I have been eagerly waiting for, featuring a too-good-to-be-true new collaboration between two of the most distinctive guitar voices around: Ella Feingold and Charlie Hunter. With these kinds of stellar pairings, tempering anticipation with caution is not unwise--but not this time. Feingold and Hunter aren't just virtuosos--they're conversationalists. ...
