My friends in the “jazz is dead” camp often pose two rhetorical questions in defense of their position: Who will want to listen? and Who will want to play this music?
The answer to the first is unknowable, but the second question will be answered in the most unequivocal way Saturday when NYO Jazz makes Tri-C’s Metropolitan Campus Auditorium the first stop on its inaugural U.S. tour.
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On the surface, Perpetual Pendulum, the new release by the trio of organist Larry Goldings, guitarist Peter Bernstein and drummer Bill Stewart who will appear Sunday at Tri-C follows the comfortingly familiar path established by generations of organ trios. But spend some time with this recording and a world of subtleties reveals itself.
Comments closedI get a lot of music for my consideration, already more than 160 new releases in 2022. Almost all of them are notable for something, and I’d like to give them their due. So, when I’m not previewing live events in Northeast Ohio, I’ll offer hot takes on recent releases. Like these.
Anniversaries and theme celebrations generally make writers groan, but editors love them. At let’s call this, I wear both hats, and this week I’ll give my editor side the benefit of the doubt. Thus today’s Women’s History Month roundup of notable new releases by women. There’s more than a common editorial conceit behind the post; these four recordings are outstanding by any measure and make a strong case for the increasing and long overdue prominence of women who play, write for and lead bands at the forefront of improvised music in the Black American tradition.
Looking at the cover photo for JUMP (Greenleaf Music), you might be forgiven for mistaking tenor saxophonist Julieta Eugenio for a teenager, but she is no kid.
Comments closedI get a lot of music for my consideration, already more than 80 new releases in 2022. Almost all of them are notable for something, and I’d like to give them their due. So, when I’m not previewing live events in Northeast Ohio (like now when there aren’t too many of those), I’ll offer hot takes on the week’s new releases.
For a certain subset of the jazz fandom multiverse, a simple personnel list would be sufficient to arouse intense interest in John Hébert’s “Sounds of Love” (Sunnyside Records).
I get a lot of music for my consideration, more than 350 new releases in 2021. Almost all of them are notable for something, and I’d like to give them their due. So, every week, more or less, I’ll offer hot takes on the releases of the preceding seven days.
Pittsburgh-born bassist Leon Lee Dorsey has had a busy 2021. In January he released “Thank You Mr. Mabern,” a trio date that may well be the late pianist Harold Mabern’s final session. Now comes “Freedom Jazz Dance” on Dorsey’s own Jazz Avenue 1 imprint.
