Editor's Pick · Featured Album Although the release of Crossing Borders by Eva Cortés comes just two years after In Bloom appeared on Truth Revolution Records, it feels like a much longer time since her sultry voice has been heard on record. Thankfully the wait is over and listeners can bask in the beguiling music of Eva Cortés once again. The smoky-voiced singer is in fine form throughout this disc, singing in Spanish and... read more
More to the Ear Than Meets the Eye is a consistently rewarding piano-trio album. Its freshness and creative strength is different on every track. There are two guests, saxophonist Richard Cole (three tunes) and trumpeter/flugelhornist Thomas Marriott (two). The horns appear only on Anschell originals, whos melodies linger in the mind. "Humble Origins" could be a jazz standard, a stark frame erected on a haunting, dark piano ostinato and an... read more
Antwerp-based pianist Bram Weijters and Chicagoan trumpeter Chad McCullough co-lead Abstract Quantities, with bassist Piet Verbist (another Antverpian) and Seattle drummer John Bishop, a quartet that has developed close musical and personal chemistry over its five-year history. The leaders share compositional chores, penning compelling themes like "Little Song (for Mirthe)" and the carnivalesque "Acceptance or Denial", but the strength of the... read more
Sidney Bechet is rightly hailed as one of the seminal figures of this music, putting his stamp on the NOLA clarinet tradition shortly after its dawn, codifying and expanding the soloist's language through his early recordings, and blazing a trail on soprano saxophone. But he was also a fine melodist, a fact which is often overlooked when his accomplishments are considered, weighed, and packaged for historical use. With this engaging duo date,... read more
4-STARS Bassist Jeff Johnson and multi-reedist Hans Teuber have a musical and personal friendship that goes back to the late eighties when both first arrived in the northwest outpost that is the city of Seattle. The jazz scene in the Pacific Northwest has always been prolific, though to many, a hidden gem outside of the main pulse of jazz cities such as New York and Chicago. In many ways, Deuce, is a snapshot of 30 years of musical give... read more
Measuring instrumental jazz isn't, on reflection, that different a task from considering vocal jazz. Again, the crux is being convinced by it all, and that's as subjective as it is arguable and, ideally, defensible.
I like Big Neighborhood's Neighbors (Origin). It is purposeful, unusual, innovative jazz of a variety that isn't going to scare anybody - for reasons good and bad, that seems, certainly, often to be a measure of jazz... read more
A lot of us jazz fans cut our listening teeth on Blue Note records by Horace Silver, Art Blakey, Lee Morgan and more. The Dynamic Les DeMerle Band's Hittin' the Blue Notes, Vol. 2 celebrates that classic sound with a set of swinging, hard-driving hard bop tunes.
Les DeMerle sat in the drummer's chair in the Harry James Orchestra for twelve years, and he brings to this project an exuberant and swinging propulsion, a crisp and brightly... read more
With the first two bars of Folk Music, you can tell that things are going to get greasy. Few people want greasy hair or greasy food, but greasy music is a whole other story: it means soulful and swinging and played with the kind of laid-back confidence that signifies true mastery. "Blues is the preacher, jazz is the teacher," says the group's website. This approach is one reason this CD is a pleasure from beginning to end.
Another is the... read more
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Hal Galper - Live at the Berlin Philharmonic, 1977
by Dan McClenaghan, All About Jazz
Rodney Whitaker with the Christ Church Cranbrook Choir - Cranbrook Christmas Jazz
by Troy Dostert, All About Jazz
Grete Skarpeid - Beyond Other Stories
by Bjorn Sandnes, Avisa Hordaland (Norway)
Kiki Valera - Vivencias en Clave Cubana
by Tom Orr, World Music Central
Meridian Odyssey - Second Wave
by Chris Spector, Midwest Record
Rodney Whitaker with the Christ Church Cranbrook Choir - Cranbrook Christmas Jazz
by Chris Spector, Midwest Record
Greg Yasinitsky - YAZZ Band: New Normal
by Chris Spector, Midwest Record
Benjamin Boone with the Ghana Jazz Collective - Joy
by Raul Da Gama, JazzdaGama
Benjamin Boone - The Poets Are Gathering
by Raul Da Gama, JazzdaGama
Meridian Odyssey - Second Wave
by Dan McClenaghan, All About Jazz