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McCoy Tyner / Joe Henderson: Forces Of Nature: Live At Slugs'
by Mike Jurkovic
When recordings like Forces of Nature: Live at Slugs' seemingly falls from yonder jazz sky, we must stop to thank those swinging stars above for our grand fortune. Because despite all our flaws--a broken politic, a poisoned planet, constant wartime bickering--we are a fortunate, if mostly undeserving, race of peculiarities. That becomes especially apparent when random, ...
Wayne Shorter: Celebration Volume 1
by Mike Jurkovic
Wayne Shorter never rested on his or anyone's laurels. So when at the start of this perilous century he convened his great, late-stage quartet with pianist Danilo Perez, bassist John Patitucci, and drummer Brian Blade it wasn't to take the bandstand and placate audience and skeptics with greatest hits or refurbished takes on old standards. It was to create ...
Linda Sikhakhane: Iladi
by Mike Jurkovic
The music of South African saxophonist Linda Sikhakhane does not so much originate from a particular point in time or space or history as much as it expands and accelerates forth from the sub-Sahara's heady mists. Billowing, charging. Seething, soothing. So ease back and let Iladi (a Zulu wisdom ritual) happen. Let the moves of diaspora move ...
Oded Tzur: My Prophet
by Mike Jurkovic
Simultaneously an open call to prayer and a frisky dance of the debutantes, “Epilogue" and “Child You" beckon and pirouette the muse, the spirit, the higher gods of our calling to come and celebrate My Prophet. Crazy good from the solemn “Epilogue" to the rattling closer, “Last Bike Ride In Paris," My Prophet is ...
Nduduzo Makhathini: uNomkhubulwane
by Mike Jurkovic
Abundantly, beatifically, and beautifully ebullient, uNomkhubulwane, Nduduzo Makhathini's eleventh overall effort but third masterwork for Blue Note (his 2020 Blue Note first, Modes of Communication: Letters From the Underworlds and 2022's In the Spirit of Ntu still shimmer and transcend) is, as is the South African pianist's quickly evolving tradition, radiant and revelatory. Emerging ...
Melissa Aldana: Echoes Of The Inner Prophet
by Mike Jurkovic
Grammy-nominated saxophonist Melissa Aldana was all of maybe 21 going on 22 in 2010 when her Inner Circle Records arrival, Free Fall, caught many a discerning ear with its surprisingly earthy and assured lines and tangents. Her first for Blue Note, 2022's 12 Stars, displayed much the same but with a more resolute, restorative, established tone. ...
Charles Lloyd: The Sky Will Still Be There Tomorrow
by Mike Jurkovic
For a long, grateful while now the music of Charles Lloyd has rippled out from that rarified space where the ego does not prevail. A pool of depth and wonder which culminates in one masterful artwork after another, for example Wild Man Dance (Blue Note, 2015) and 8: Kindred Spirits Live from the Lobero Theater (Blue ...
Justin Chart: Keep The Blue
by Hrayr Attarian
Not all entirely improvised music necessarily embraces dissonance and atonality, however stimulating that may be. Saxophonist Justin Chart is famous for spontaneously creating entire sets, whether in the studio or in live settings, that are firmly rooted in mainstream sounds. His output is consistently cinematic and absorbing with a mysterious aura. His Keep the Blue is ...
John Coltrane: Evenings At The Village Gate
by Mike Jurkovic
All music is, as are all our greater gestures and pursuits--poetry, painting, literature, sculpture, dance--spiritual by nature. An outreach by the artist and thus, by extension, us, beyond the daily argot of the ordinary. But sometimes those instances are so far and in-between, so masked by the lawlessness of the present moment, that our higher selves ...
Bobo Stenson Trio: Sphere
by Mike Jurkovic
Bobo Stenson first rose to recognition as a sideman and in-house pianist in the late '60s with saxophonist Sonny Rollins, vibraphonist Gary Burton, and saxophonist Charles Lloyd, among many others. But it was in 1971, alongside drummer Jon Christensen, that he established his subtle, humorous shadings and folkish, earthy style with Underwear (ECM). Yet Stenson's intimate ...
