Browse some recent Origin Reviews.
Seattle Repertory Jazz Orchestra - The Endless Search
by Adam Greenberg, All Music Guide
After a guest spot with the Seattle Repertory Jazz Orchestra in 2001, longtime sax player Jimmy Heath went back to work at Queens College. Letting a few years pass, the SRJO came back with a commission -- an attempt to create new music for the older structured form of big-band jazz. The result was a three-part tour de force of harmony that manages to showcase the formidable horns of Seattle individually without simply resorting to solos. This is... read more
Tim Jensen - A Mind For The Scenery
by Dan McClenaghan, All About Jazz
Red flags flare up when a disc comes in with the tag "eclectic" lurking in the press material. The New Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines the word as "selecting or made up of what seems best of varied sources." But the word sometimes serves as a shorthand for�in the world of music assessment�unfocused or lacking continuity of vision. Fortunately, multiple reedman Tim Jensen's A Mind for the Scenery holds to the true definition.
The Portland,... read more
Various Artists - The Piano: The Best of Seattle Jazz
by Adam Greenburg, All Music Guide
Stemming from a donation drive for a local jazz club, this compilation deals out an overview of some of the best jazz Seattle has to offer. While the title alludes to the piano as a centerpiece, the album doesn't focus so strongly on it. Every track save one includes an outstanding pianist (Marc Seales, John Hansen, and Dave Peck are among the brightest of the bunch), but they're often overshadowed by some incredible horn players, vocalists, and... read more
Ryan Shultz - Hair Dryers
by Chris Spector, Midwest Record
You'd have to be a hard core jazzbo to get the significance of this but Shultz is one of the few bass trumpeters out there. And he's right here in Chicago pushing the envelope of innovation right in our backyards. With a bunch of locals backing him that locals would do well to get more familiar with, this music of big shoulders is not full of smelly onions. This crew had to spend a fair bunch of time digging the sounds of AACM and they... read more
Bobby Rozario - Spellbound
by Mark Griffith, Modern Drummer
This is a very ambitious record and please don't assume that you know what to expect when you see that a guitarist is leading a band with a lot of Latin percussion players. Guitarist, composer, arranger, and producer Bobby Rozario has put together a very special and original project and created some wonderful music. Rozario and Spellbound lean much closer to Mahavishnu than "Black Magic Woman." We all know what Dennis Chambers is capable of, he... read more
Eric Jacobson - Heading Home
by Nicholas F. Mondello, All About Jazz
4-STARS Wisconsin trumpeter, composer-arranger, educator and author Eric Jacobson and his team deliver Heading Home, his third album as leader. Offering eight Jacobson originals played by Chicago heavyweights and a New Yorker guest, all Jacobson regulars, the album, a hard bop retrospective, is arguably—if not definitively—the trumpeter's finest outing to date.
"Survival" opens in a speedball frenzy with trumpet and tenor, the... read more
Abate Berihun & The Addis Ken Project - Addis Ken
by Mike Gates, UK Vibe
5 STARS
Occasionally, an album comes along that sings to me in such a way that it just leaves me mesmerised, spellbound by its spiritual beauty. Addis Ken (New Day) by Abate Berihun & The Addis Ken Project belongs firmly in this category. It feels like it's somehow channelling the history of an ancient civilisation through its creativity, energy, and musical storytelling.
Berihun, an Ethiopian-born, Israel-based... read more
Mimi Fox - This Bird Still Flies
by Andrew Gilbert, The Mercury News
BEST OF 2019 Vallejo guitarist Mimi Fox extends her reputation as one of jazz's finest solo practitioners with an eclectic set unified by her unabashedly open-hearted sensibility as she transmutes folk tunes, jazz standards, original compositions and popular songs into revelatory personal... read more
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