Results for "Play This!"

Brad Shepik: Vapor Oro

by Mike Jacobs
January 11, 2024

George Russell: Concerto For Billy The Kid

by Chris May
January 11, 2024

Sandy Bull: Blend

by Chris May
January 10, 2024

Long before the description “world music" had been coined, the outward-looking guitarist and oudist Sandy Bull laid it out with drummer Billy Higgins on the Vanguard albums Fantasias For Guitar And Banjo (1963) and Inventions (1965), which blended jazz, Levantine, Caribbean, Brazilian and rock music. The mesmerising “Blend" is the 22-minute opening track on Fantasias.

Gyan Riley: Mobettabutta Part 3

by Mike Jacobs
January 10, 2024

It might be a tad predictable that the guitar-playing scion of celebrated minimalist composer Terry Riley might be hard to pigeon-hole stylistically but this only adds to the mystique and adventure of Gyan Riley's music. A conservatory-trained classical guitarist, he nonetheless exhibits eclectic (and electric) tendencies that do well to encompass jazz, classical. avant-garde and fusion ...

George Brooks: McCoy

by Mike Jacobs
January 9, 2024

By the time Summit (Earth Brother, 2000) was released, Bay Area-based saxophonist George Brooks had already built a reputation with his brand of East-meets-West Indo-jazz and working alongside music luminaries such as Zakir Hussain. But with the inclusion of bassist Kai Eckhardt, guitarist Fareed Haque, drummer Steve Smith along with Hussain and sitarist Niladri Kumar, Summit ...

Hadrien Feraud: Rhapsody In Blue

by Mike Jacobs
January 7, 2024

Prodigies are certainly nothing new but it's still quite unbelievable when a young talent arrives so fully-formed and so poised to build on the work of absolute game-changers in their musical idiom. Such was the case in 2007 when bassist Hadrien Feraud's self-titled debut album hit people's ears. The then 20-year-old Feraud's take on “Rhapsody In ...

Jay Clayton: Looking Back (Reflections)

by Katchie Cartwright
January 5, 2024

Born and raised in Youngstown, Ohio, Jay Clayton (October 28. 1941--December 31, 2023) summoned the courage to move to New York in 1963, finding her way into the free jazz scene at a time when singers (excluding Jeanne Lee and a few outliers) were simply not within the ranks of the jazz avant-garde. Her free jazz ...

Remembering Tony Oxley: Combination

by Ian Patterson
December 30, 2023

The sad news of the passing of free-spirited English drummer/percussionist Tony Oxley on December 26, 2023, is tempered by the knowledge that his was a life well lived, and his musical legacy a lasting one. As a member of Ronnie Scott's house band in the latter half of the 1960s, Yorkshireman Oxley played with some of ...

Ralph Towner: Winter Solstice

by Geno Thackara
December 21, 2023

It's a thoughtful, pastoral yet playful album--an early touchstone of the ECM label's sound, for good reason--and right in the middle, Ralph Towner decides to take a breather a bit more sparse than the rest. The quartet lineup drops to just a duo, and he and Jan Garbarek spin a cozy little tone poem evoking the ...

Hilario Durán and his Latin Jazz Big Band: Cry Me A River

by John Chacona
December 20, 2023

Believe it or not, people were writing kiss-off songs long before Taylor Swift and Justin Timberlake. This one was made famous by the unjustly neglected Julie London in 1955, but you've never heard it done like this before. Havana-born pianist Hilario Duran arranged this title song from a 2023 recording on his own Alma Records label ...