Recorded in 1975 at the Köln Opera House and released the same year, this disc has, along with its revelatory music, some attendant cultural baggage that is unfair in one sense: Every pot-smoking and dazed and confused college kid -- and a few of the more sophisticated ones in high school -- owned this as one of the truly classic jazz records, ...
Charlie Haden and Pat Metheny have been good friends since the 1970s, so it comes as a bit of a surprise that Beyond the Missouri Sky should be their first duet album together. Both musicians are from small towns in Missouri, which leads Metheny to speculate in the liner notes if this similarity of childhood ambience might have something to do ...
Psychicemotus was released in 1965 and features Yusef Lateef on various flutes and tenor saxophone, Georges Arvanitas on piano, bassist Reggie Workman, and drummer James Black. And while the Coltrane era of modal and free jazz was in full swing, Lateef always followed his own muse, and continued looking forward while looking back to ancient musics ...
When Kurt Elling issued Man in the Air on the Blue Note label in 2003, it showcased his expansive, dream-weaving stage persona, though the album was recorded in the studio. Nightmoves arrives at a time when Elling has left Blue Note for the hopefully greener pastures of the Concord kingdom, and has been both directing and hosting festivals while ...
More than a decade into their career, Medeski, Martin & Wood continue to expand their sound. This time out, they've enlisted John King (Dust Brothers, Beck, Beastie Boys) as producer and engineer, and he brings a left-field pop sensibility to the table without ever sacrificing the personality and energy of the band. OK, it's not really "pop," but ...
The allusion of the title East/West is an apt one; this live double-CD set is a study in contrasts. Recorded just six months apart with two different trios, Bill Frisell really shows both sides of his musical personality. The "East" disc was recorded in December of 2003 at the Village Vanguard with Frisell on guitar (acoustic and electric) and ...
This album is perhaps most significant for the process it set in motion -- the collaboration between Gil Evans and Miles Davis that would produce Porgy and Bess and Sketches of Spain, two of Davis' best albums. That said, this album is a miracle in itself, the result of a big gamble on the part of Columbia Records, who put together Evans and Davis ...
Although Miles Davis did not live to participate in Gerry Mulligan's reunion recordings featuring the nonet that played on the famous late-'40s and early-'50s cool sessions, he participated in a reunion concert held at Montreux in 1991. This featured both the Gil Evans Orchestra and George Gruntz Concert Jazz Band, plus additional guests Benny ...
Nefertiti, the fourth album by Miles Davis' second classic quintet, continues the forward motion of Sorcerer, as the group settles into a low-key, exploratory groove, offering music with recognizable themes -- but themes that were deliberately dissonant, slightly unsettling even as they burrowed their way into the consciousness. In a sense, this ...
Festival of Light, Vol. 2 is an equally satisfying follow-up to the groundbreaking Hanukkah holiday compilation, capturing traditional and non-traditional musical takes on the season ranging from humorous and celebratory to ethereal, solemn, and spiritual. The generally subdued musical feel is broken at times by more boisterous offerings from the ...
Violin/piano duet sessions are routine in the classical music world -- after all, Beethoven wrote ten sonatas for this combination -- but you rarely encounter them in jazz, due in great part to the shortage of jazz violinists. The Kenny Barron/Regina Carter sessions came about sometime after a gig at Sweet Basil's in New York -- and since the two ...
We've heard of quartets, quintets, sextets, etc, but "mu'tet"s? That's the multi-saxophonist's way of covering the many different ensemble switches and guest personnel appearing on this wildly wonderful, genre-defying effort, which was made possible by the hiatus of Béla Fleck & the Flecktones, of which Jeff Coffin has been a member of since 1997. ...
A collection of ambient breakbeat and soundtrack-influenced rock, Offbeat is an appropriately titled left-field venture of the Red Hot + Blue benefit series. Included are tracks from "alternative" acts like Soul Coughing, My Bloody Valentine, Spookey Ruben, Barry Adamson and Laika, plus more dancefloor-oriented producers like Skylab, DJ Krush, ...
Trumpeter Arturo Sandoval is one of those cats who can never be predictable. He's either amazing -- actually, technically he always is -- or his records are putrid exercises in hollow proficiency with no soul. Trumpet Evolution, which is literally a journey through the great trumpeters from jazz's and orchestral music's past, is easily the finest ...
Echoing his 1995 release, Nashville, Bill Frisell's The Willies revisits the auburn sounds of American roots music. Although he has dipped into folk music in prior efforts, these songs follow the traditional mode even more faithfully than any of his previous releases, with only minor shifts into his familiar dissonant explorations. Assisted by ...
For a trio that has been together this long (over 20 years), Keith Jarrett, Gary Peacock, and Jack DeJohnette still play with the enthusiasm of a group of people discovering each other for the first time. That's no cliché. One listen to "If I Were a Bell," the opening track on this live set, reveals how footloose, free, and excited these three can ...
Is it still art when you can fingerpop to it? Finally, it's arrived. In 2003 jazz songwriter, pianist, and bandleader Patricia Barber received a Guggenheim fellowship to create a song cycle based on Ovid's Metamorphoses. Barber is that rare kind of jazz artist -- she appeals to non-jazz fans. She's as ambitious as they get and her poetic, ...
A casual listen might suggest that Floratone is a new Bill Frisell project (and that would be mostly correct), except every indication is that this is a fully collaborative project between Frisell, drummer Matt Chamberlain, and Tucker Martine and Lee Townsend. Composition credits are all shared and they all appear on the front cover. Why is that ...
In 2005, Paul Motian returned to ECM as a leader after a long hiatus. He reassembled his partnership with guitarist Bill Frisell and saxophonist Joe Lovano. The album they released, I Have the Room Above Her, was ecstatically reviewed across the globe. The trio members, who hadn't recorded together as such since 1984, showed a tremendous empathy ...
Out of the Cool, released in 1960, was the first recording Gil Evans issued after three straight albums with Miles Davis -- Sketches of Spain being the final one before this. Evans had learned much from Davis about improvisation, instinct, and space (the trumpeter learned plenty, too, especially about color, texture, and dynamic tension). Evans ...
The third album by singer/songwriter Sonny Smith is a purported concept album about his neighborhood in Oakland, CA. In reality, there's not much narrative thread connecting these songs, which are fairly standard-issue alt folk. Smith has an offhand, twangy vocal style that stops just short of sounding like a complete affectation, and the largely ...
What can you say about a 21-year-old jazz pianist who begins with John Coltrane's "Giant Steps," turns the harmony inside out, twists the mode, and presents its mirror image and reflects the composer's lyricism and fire in fiery post-bop language, and still maintain the integrity of the tune? Only that it's Taylor Eigsti. Lucky to Be Me is Eigsti ...
Life of a Song is Geri Allen's first recording under her own name in six long years. She teams with the rhythm section of bassist Dave Holland and drummer Jack DeJohnette, whom she worked with on the late Betty Carter's stellar live date Feed the Fire in 1993. Allen composed eight of the album's 11 cuts, and the covers include Bud Powell's "Dance ...
Jazz fans the world over have become familiar with pianist Marcin Wasilewski, bassist Slawomir Kurkiewicz, and drummer Michal Miskiewicz because they make up three quarters of the Tomasz Stanko Quartet. Working with Stanko live since 1993 when they were in their teens, they are now his studio band as well, and perform on his two recent, widely ...
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