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Karl Ackermann’s Best Releases of 2020
by Karl Ackermann
2020 abridged: A staggering loss of lives and livelihoods. We had worldwide social unrest, wildfires, locust swarms of Biblical proportions, killer hornets, killer drones, kids in cages; an impeachment, an election, an attempted insurrection. Oh, and Poland accidentally invaded the Czech Republic. It was not exactly the Gilded Age. Yet, amid doom-scrolling, the creative music community ...
Chris May’s Best Releases Of 2020
by Chris May
Not the best year for live gigs in London, but Dele Sosimi's Afrobeat Orchestra just made it under the wire, lighting up the Jazz Cafe in late January. Rather like Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers, Sosimi's band has form as an incubator of young talent. A recent star in the making was trumpeter Ife Ogunjobi, who has ...
Roberto Magris: Suite!
by Jerome Wilson
Roberto Magris, the Italian pianist who spends a good bit of time in the United States, records prolifically. His latest release is a 2CD set that covers a lot of ground, encompassing sparkling hard bop, spiritual jazz, solo piano work and soulful excursions that feature electric keyboards. For much of the CD Magris plays ...
Zappa
by Ian Patterson
Alex Winter Zappa Magnolia Pictures 2020 Composer, guitarist and iconoclast nonpareil, Frank Zappa was never an easy artist to pin down, as Alex Winter's perceptive and entertaining documentary makes abundantly clear. If an artist's music should speak for itself, what are we to make of Zappa's freakish '60s collage ...
Yusef Lateef: An Alternative Top Ten Albums Blowing Cultural Nationalism Out Of The Water
by Chris May
A pioneer of global and modal jazz, the multi-instrumentalist and composer Yusef Lateef is only beginning to have his importance in the history of the music properly acknowledged. After languishing off-catalogue for decades, much of his output is being made available once more. A treasure trove of great jazz is out there waiting to be rediscovered. ...
Angel Bat Dawid & Tha Brothahood: Live
by Chris May
When the Chicago-based clarinetist, vocalist, composer, poet and spiritual-jazz shaman Angel Bat Dawid performed with Tha Brothahood at the London Jazz Festival in November 2019, she was riding high on the critical acclaim surrounding her recently released debut album, The Oracle (International Anthem). A cosmic lightning bolt of free jazz, mutant funk, electronica and spoken word ...
Roots Magic: Take Root Among The Stars
by Neri Pollastri
Terzo disco di rivisitazione delle “magiche radici" della musica nera per opera di un quartetto (ma stavolta in due brani si allarga a sestetto) che si è imposto come una delle formazioni più interessanti del nostro jazz. Emblematica la foto interna alla confezione del CD, che ritrae i quattro musicisti attorno alla lapide sulla ...
Out of the Roma Villages of Turkey, Clarinet Reigns Beyond Its Traditions
by Arthur R George
The clarinet, foundational for jazz from Sidney Bechet unto Eric Dolphy, remains in strong use in the indigenous Roma music of the eastern Mediterranean. Elsewhere in the world clarinet generally has been moved aside by saxophone's bigger sound. But in the Balkans, Greece, and Turkey, clarinet provides jazz shadings to traditional music, speaks a range of ...
Rahsaan Roland Kirk: An Alternative Top Ten Albums Guaranteed To Bend Your Head
by Chris May
Jazz musicians are rarely called shamanistic but the description fits Rahsaan Roland Kirk precisely. Clad in black leather trousers and heavy duty shades (he was blind from the age of two), a truckload of strange looking horns strung round his neck—two or three of which he often played simultaneously--twisting, shaking and otherwise contorting his body, stamping ...
The Volcanic World Of Pyroclastic Records
by Mark Corroto
As listeners we so often typecast musicians and music labels. Artists are pigeonholed into silos: classical, jazz, rock, blues, pop, etc.. Go into any record store (if you can find a brick & mortar one) and this segregation, a forced separation, is also evident. Even streaming services are divided in this manner. Maybe it is just ...
