Browse some recent Origin Reviews.
Scenes - Variable Clouds: Live at the Earshot Jazz Festival
by Paul Rauch, Earshot Jazz
The Northwest trio/quartet Scenes dates back twelve years or so prior to their 2001 album debut. Over the years, the band became a trio featuring guitarist John Stowell, bassist Jeff Johnson, and drummer John Bishop due to injuries that forced tenor saxophonist Rick Mandyck into a fourteen-year hiatus from playing the saxophone.
Mandyck returned to the band's recordings and live performances in 2019, culminating in the Origin Records release... read more
Christopher Icasiano - Provinces
by Gregg Daniel Miller, Free Jazz Blog
4 1/2 STARS I had to listen to this record for months before I could write about it. It's that different. Percussion solo records are an interesting breed, and this one doesn't remind me of anything.
Icasiano's percussiveness is all about the pacing and grouping of the beats. Clusters, clusters, driving and then receding, with crisscross patterns emerging from the maelstrom. Psychedelic. Disorienting. There is no "one," and while... read more
Laurie Antonioli - Songs of Shadow, Songs of Light
by Andrew Gilbert, KQED Arts
The Golden State of Jazz: Top California Jazz Releases of 2014
Several of Joni Mitchell's songs are firmly established in the jazz repertoire, but no singer before Bay Area veteran Laurie Antonioli has wrought as fine a balance between the original sources and her own vivid emotional and improvisational palette. It's a journey that wouldn't be possible without her supple American Dreams Band, with saxophonist Sheldon Brown, pianist... read more
Doug Miller - Regeneration
by Chris Robinson, Earshot Jazz
Don't believe what your ears might tell you: there are only four guys on bassist Doug Miller's new album Regeneration.
The versatility and chops on display here, most notably by Jay Thomas, who plays trumpet, flugelhorn, tenor, soprano, and flute on this date, are either inspiring or discouraging, depending on your outlook. Joining Thomas is Miller, who wrote the majority of the album's compositions, Dave Peterson on guitar and keys, and... read more
Dana Hall - Into the Light
by Doug Ramsey, Rifftides
Dana Hall, Into The Light (Origin). Drummers who flaunt their technique can be enemies of music when their busyness becomes the center-ring distraction in a band. Dana Hall is a busy drummer, but in his case that's a compliment. He accompanies with waves of rhythmic patterns surging and swelling behind, under and around soloists. This 40-year-old Chicagoan?debuting here as a leader?manages to amalgamate his virtuosity so that he melds... read more
Hal Galper - Live at the Berlin Philharmonic, 1977
by Dan McClenaghan, All About Jazz
4-STARS It must be gratifying to accomplish everything you set out to do. Pianist Hal Galper says he has done just that. And, after a career that included work with trumpeter Chet Baker and saxophonists Cannonball Adderley and Stan Getz, along with a ten year stint in saxophonist Phil Woods' band (1980-1990), followed by ten years of touring and recording with his own trio, that claim would have been a valid one then, before the dawn of... read more
Kobie Watkins - Involved
by Howard Reich, Chicago Tribune
Finally, drummer Kobie Watkins segues from hard bop to jazz funk to unabashedly romantic balladry in his CD "Involved" (Origin Records). If the constantly shifting jazz languages point to a young musician perhaps trying a bit too hard to show everything he can do, Watkins nonetheless handles it all. He benefits from hard-charging contributions from a cast of Chicago all-stars, particularly saxophonists Jarrard Harris and Geof Bradfield,... read more
Rodney Whitaker - Outrospection: The Music of Gregg Hill
by LAWRENCE COSENTINO, City Pulse (Lansing, MI)
Rodney Whitaker's "Outrospection" processes the pandemic A lone trombone casts a shard of song onto the waves, a bottle with a note inside: Is anybody out there? "Outrospection," the title track of bassist Rodney Whitaker's latest CD, bares the scars from the lonely year of 2020, along with hopes for a better future together.
Whitaker recalled the momentous day last August when he convened an all-star ensemble of musicians who... read more
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