Browse some recent Origin Reviews.
Anthony Branker and Word Play - Uppity
by Ken Franckling, Ken Franckling's Jazz Notes
A medical condition that led to a seizure and two brain aneurysms in 1999 forced jazzman Anthony Branker to give up the trumpet, but not his talents as a conceptualist and composer. (He is also an educator ? the founder and director of the jazz studies program at Princeton.) His newest release, featuring his all-star sextet Word Play, is both beautiful and provocative. Favorites: ?Three Gifts (from a Nigerian Mother to God)? and the title track... read more
John Stowell | Michael Zilber - Live Beauty
by Dan McClenaghan, All About Jazz
4-STARS - Part of the appeal of the teaming of guitarist John Stowell with various "post Coltrane" saxophonists is the cool/hot dynamic. Stowell is the guy with a Zen restraint, the cool guy, his chords sometimes sounding as if they are ringing from frozen stalactite filaments in ice caves. Saxophonists? Some blow cool - those of the Lester Young/Stan Getz/Paul Desmond school. And then there's sax guys like Dave Liebman, who teamed... read more
Marc Seales - People & Places
by Thierry De Clemensat, Paris Move
5-STARS A Dream Album of People, Places, and Time: Marc Seales and Ernie Watts Deliver a Jazz Masterpiece for the Ages.
The title, and even the opening notes, of this album might initially evoke the laid-back sophistication of a Michael Franks project. And indeed, there is something unmistakably refined, almost architectural, about this collaboration. In an era when melodic clarity is too often sacrificed for trend or abstraction,... read more
Bobby Broom - Bobby Broom Plays for Monk
by Howard Reich, Chicago Tribune
August 10, 2009
Thelonious Monk seems to bring out the best in Bobby Broom.
For though jazz listeners know Broom for the buoyant, blues-based sensibility of his guitar work, he attains a new degree of fervor in the music of Monk.
Certainly he did over the weekend at the Green Mill Jazz Club, where he celebrated the release of his latest CD, "Bobby Broom Plays for Monk" (Origin Records). Even more than on the recording, the Chicago... read more
Chris Walden Big Band - No Bounds
by Jim Santella, All About Jazz
For his sophomore release, trumpeter Chris Walden has written big band arrangements for several old chestnuts, several fresh originals and a few rare gems. His program sparkles with an accessible ambience. The combination of several vocal selections, a balance of orchestral instruments and big band sounds, and stellar soloing from this lineup of Los Angeles all-stars ensures that No Bounds will compare favorably with Walden's highly successful... read more
Clarence Penn - Monk: The Lost Files
by Tim Wilkins, WBGO - New York
No, Monk: The Lost Files isn't a master tape drummer Clarence Penn found stuck behind the stacks at the Library of Congress. But the story is just as good.
The way Clarence tells it, a glass of wine at his son's second birthday party led to a computer dysfunction that ate some tape he desperately wanted to keep. Penn had recorded a rhythmic reimagining of Monk tunes, as an experiment with his Penn Station colleagues Chad... read more
Les DeMerle - Gypsy Rendezvous, Vol. 2
by Adam Greenberg, All Music Guide
Les DeMerle and his wife, vocalist Bonnie Eisele, released a previous album of Gypsy jazz-inspired pieces back in 2009 that showed some hints of greatness when DeMerle and Eisele were able to combine effectively with their Gypsy jazz counterparts, and a bit of musical confusion when they weren't able to meet in the middle. Here, the two factions work together much more cleanly. Where DeMerle and Eisele had a tendency toward power in the past,... read more
Paul Tynan - quARTet
by Robert Rusch, Cadence
As a painter, even beginning with my earliest work, I realized the effect composition and improvisation had on my canvas work. I would often pick some music to try to trigger/inspire my painting. PAUL TYNAN [tpt/flg/corn] has essentially turned the tables on that on quARTet [Origin Records 82776]. For this CD, Tynan has taken a piece of artwork (canvas or photograph), spent intimate time with it and then fashioned a composition and improvisation... read more
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