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Roll Call: November 30, 2020

Published 2 December, 2020 By John Chacona
Roll Call: November 30, 2020

I get a lot of music for my consideration, more than 450 new releases so far this year. Almost all of them are notable for something, and I’d like to give them their due. So every week, I’ll do quick hits on the releases of the preceding seven days. it’s a great writing exercise, and a lot of fun, too.

Jeff Ellwood The Sounds Around the House coverYou never get a second chance to make a first impression, the old saying goes. So, when you’re planning your debut CD release, why not surround yourself with some highly accomplished A-listers? That’s what Jeff Ellwood did on “The Sounds Around the House,” and it pays off

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Roll Call: September 11, 2020

Published 11 September, 2020 By John Chacona
Roll Call: September 11, 2020

I get a lot of music for my consideration, more than 360 new releases so far this year. Almost all of them are notable for something, and I’d like to give them their due. So every week, I’ll do quick hits on the releases of the preceding seven days. it’s a great writing exercise, and a lot of fun, too.

Think of “Something to Say“ as a map that leads the listener directly to trombonist Matt Haviland‘s musical heart. He gets you there pretty quick, exploding out of the blocks with Freddie Hubbard’s “Arietis,” the adrenalized hard-bop workout that led off Hubbard’s “Ready for Freddie.” That classic Blue Note session was recorded in 1961, and Johnathan Blake’s muscular, post-Tony Williams drum style excepted,

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Roll Call: September 4, 2020

Published 4 September, 2020 By John Chacona
Roll Call: September 4, 2020

I get a lot of music for my consideration, more than 345 new releases so far this year. Almost all of them are notable for something, and I’d like to give them their due. So every week, I’ll do quick hits on the releases of the preceding seven days. it’s a great writing exercise, and a lot of fun, too.

Trumpeter Michael Sarian was born in Toronto to Armenian parents, grew up in Buenos Aires and has lived in New York since 2012. Yet his sound is closest to lyrical European players such as Enrico Rava, Tomasz Stanko and Kenny Wheeler.

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Roll Call Extra: Big Band Edition, Sept. 4, 2020

Published 4 September, 2020 By John Chacona
Roll Call Extra: Big Band Edition, Sept. 4, 2020

I get a lot of music for my consideration, more than 345 new releases so far this year. Almost all of them are notable for something, and I’d like to give them their due. So every week, I’ll do quick hits on the releases of the preceding seven days. it’s a great writing exercise, and a lot of fun, too.

Yesterday I wrote about the gusher of big band recordings that have been an unlikely feast in this summer of musical famine. Now to the tastiest of them, which is also perhaps the most substantial.

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Roll Call: Big Band Edition, Sept. 3, 2020

Published 3 September, 2020 By John Chacona
Roll Call: Big Band Edition, Sept. 3, 2020

I get a lot of music for my consideration, more than 325 new releases so far this year. Almost all of them are notable for something, and I’d like to give them their due. So every week, I’ll do quick hits on the releases of the preceding seven days. it’s a great writing exercise, and a lot of fun, too.

Labor Day is this weekend and the prospect of hearing ensemble jazz of any kind seems very far away. When the ensemble crowds more than a dozen players onto the bandstand, most of them playing instruments activated by the breath, big band performances are likely to be the last to return.

Yet at a moment when things couldn’t get much stranger or more ironic, here comes one of the richest crops of big band recordings in a long time.

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