Browse some recent Origin Reviews.
Hal Galper Trio - Invitation to Openness
by Chris Spector, Midwest Record
Originally a 2008 radio concert, when Galper was entering the final phase of his long career that's still in motion, he unleashed his piano into a kind of free jazz where he was improvising on composed music as the urge struck him in each different moment. Proceeding on a full blown busman's holiday of letting the whims blow where they will, it's just a gasser to hear a geezer move way beyond the boundaries without a care in the world. Purely... read more
Xavier Lecouturier - Carrier
by Tom McCarter, KZSU - Stanford
On drummer Lecouturier's debut disc as a leader, the tunes allude to a variety of influences both compositionally and spatially, while displaying a deep connection to jazz tradition. While Lecouturier is the primary force on the record both as a musician and composer, there is a definite collective feel to the effort.
If You Like: Art Blakey, Miles Okazaki, Geri Allen, Wayne... read more
Todd Bishop Pop Art 4 - 69 Annee Erotique: Music of Serge Gainsbourg
by C. Michael Bailey, All About Jazz
Context can be everything or nothing. Listening to 69 Annee Erotique with no background will spark recognition of well-preserved lounge music of the 1960s/'70s, performed with modern sonics imitating those of the period: A bit of psychedelia wisping into the edges of post-war Western society right before the Summer of Love and the sexual revolution. The music is all well played and entertaining. Portland Oregon drummer Todd Bishop creates a... read more
Jessica Williams - Songs of Earth
by Donald Elfman, New York City Jazz Record
The four artists (Jessica Williams, Denny Zeitlin, Arturo O?Farrill, Gabriel Zufferey) who make up this quartet of splendid new solo piano recordings are careful and thoughtful in their choice of both notes and spaces. The performances collected here are clearly about expression.
In concert at Seattle?s The Triple Door, on Songs of Earth Jessica Williams? concept and technique are grand and symphonic but fall, as she rightly says, into no... read more
Various Artists - Modern Jazz: A Collection of Seattle's Finest Jazz
by Adam Greenburg, All Music Guide
A nice compilation of the lighter and somewhat more mainstream end of the Origin label's growing catalog of Seattle jazzers. With a number of artists represented, the mainstay of the album is a focus with something of a modern bent. There are aspects of post-bop to be heard, and slight references to the third stream set, but far and away, the bulk of the material is based in contemporary instrumental jazz. The piano plays heavily in all or most... read more
Jessica Williams - Songs For A New Century
by Thomas Conrad, All About Jazz
It is hard to think of a jazz musician who has gone her own way more resolutely than pianist Jessica Williams. She works only on her own solo and trio projects, never as a sideperson. She engineers her own albums for her own label, Red and Blue, and sells them on her own website, which she designs and maintains herself. She plays only in the venues she chooses (and she almost never chooses clubs). Even her place of residence is individualistic:... read more
Allison Adams Tucker - WANDERlust
by George Varga, San Diego Union-Tribune
San Diego music mainstay Allison Adams Tucker isn't kidding when she describes herself as a "world jazz singer."
As her third and newest album, "WANDERlust," handily reaffirms, she can sing with equal skill and poise in English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Italian and Japanese. Recorded in New York, the alluring "WANDERlust" teams her with such luminaries as Chicago saxophonist Chris Potter, Mexican drummer Antonio Sanchez and Brazilian... read more
Chad McCullough Bram Weijters - Urban Nightingale
by Dan McClenaghan, All About Jazz
Chad McCullough, with one CD under his own name - the outstanding Dark Wood, Dark Water (Origin Records, 2009) - has also contributed his distinctive voice to recordings by the Kora Band and Tunnel Six, all under the Origin Records banners. But the Seattle-based trumpeter must have a European sensibility; his finest work to date has been in teaming, as co-leader, with artists from the other side of the Atlantic - Slovakian pianist Michal... read more
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