Music Reviews: Jazz

The years after the liberation of France from German occupation in August 1944 were not easy ones for the great guitarist Django Reinhardt. Somehow, during the occupation, he had managed to remain in France and continue to play professionally with great success and even record while hundreds of thousands of fellow members of the Romany ethnic group were murdered by the Nazis.After the war, he and violinist Stephane Grapelli, on several occasions, the last in 1948, had... Read More

When jazz aficionados see the phrases Miles Davis and Prestige Recordings in the same sentence, they think of the “marathon sessions” of 1956, where the trumpeter and his quintet (known in retrospect as his 1st Great Quintet: John Coltrane, Red Garland, Paul Chambers, and Philly Joe Jones) blazed through four albums’ worth of material (released over the next few years as Relaxin’, Steamin’, Workin’, and Cookin’) in just two days (May 11 and October 26), to complete... Read More

David Bowie recorded Station to Station—one of his greatest records IMO—at Cherokee Studios sometime in 1975 the same year as this Basie, Bellson, Brown album was put to tape in the same place. Bowie was in mid-career greatness, the jazz masters were clearly playing prime time but not at peak musical creativity, nor, to be honest, were most jazz fanatics paying much attention. Norman Granz started the label to give these greats an outlet, almost as a tribute space.... Read More

Bill Evans in Norway is a double album with a never before heard recording of an excellent 1970 concert from the Kongsberg Jazz festival featuring the Evans trio with bassist Eddie Gómez and drummer Marty Morell.

You needn't read the liner notes to feel from where drummer/composer Jacob Wendt draws his inspiration. The front cover photo and art direction offer a hint. The back cover does not, but drop the stylus on the title track opener and you'll hear Rudy's classic Blue Note stereo spread and feel Horace Silverness of it. The "Sidewinder"-ness of the follow up tune, "New Groove" is even more obvious, but on neither tune nor on any of... Read More

1957 was a landmark year for Thelonious Monk, possibly the most overtly original pianist in jazz history. He started playing in New York nightclubs again for the first time in six years, owing to the return of his cabaret card (essential for the city’s musicians back then), which had been suspended due to a drug charge. He recruited John Coltrane, who brought a thrilling new timbre to his band. And he recorded Monk’s Music, one of his most splendid albums—a brash... Read More

Bassist-composer Ben Wolfe is one of those “musicians’ musicians,” little known even among aficionados but a staple on the New York scene, adept at jazz and classical, rarely straying from the straight-ahead, but carving melodic lines and harmonic colors well outside conventional boundaries. His latest album, his 11th as a leader, is called The Understated (on his own Resident Arts Records label), and that’s one fair description of the music. Of its 10 tracks, all... Read More

The tenor saxophonist Chris Potter plays with such youthful zest, it’s startling to realize he’s been on the New York jazz scene for 35 years. He turned heads from the get-go, in 1989, at age 18, as sideman to trumpeter Red Rodney (who, in his youth 40 years earlier, had been sideman to Charlie Parker). Through the subsequent decades, Potter has played in bands led by (among many others) Paul Motian, Dave Holland, Dave Douglas, Pat Metheny, and, for a spell, Steely... Read More

On April 5, 1923, in Richmond, Indiana, in the studio of Gennett Records, King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band made the first of thirty-seven recordings mixing African instrumental techniques and concepts of improvisation and rhythm with European notions of harmony, melody, and the virtuoso soloist, to create the template for the music we’ve been listening to for the last century. The Creole Jazz Band’s six recording sessions, all between April and December in 1923, made... Read More

Jerome Sabbagh's latest offering opens with a simmering, slow cooker of a cover of Duke Ellington's groundbreaking "Prelude To A Kiss". Sabbagh takes the ballad at a halting, note by note pace that explores the unique melodic line's contours, while veteran drummer Al Foster does likewise, leaving gaping spaces in between minimalist cymbal and skin hits. Paced so slowly, it startles, then you realize it's actually strongly swinging on Joe... Read More

While this is admittedly a simplification, Tone Poet Blue Note releases come in a few basic musical flavors: the "must have" ones that even non-jazz fans know by name, the great ones that when originally released couldn't find an audience but now are more popular and well-appreciated than ever, the head scratcher delayed release ones that have fans wondering how and why the label didn't issue them when originally recorded, and finally the delayed... Read More

This album arrived in the mail featuring jazz vocalist Teri Roiger, her husband and bassist John Menegon, both unfamiliar to me, plus always a joy to enjoy, Jack DeJohnette and Kenny Burrell (drums and guitar, but you already knew that). How this session happened—have DeJohnette and Burrell ever played together previously or ever again?—I don't know. But once I played it and heard Roiger's vocals I think I understood why those two did the gig, why I needed... Read More

David Murray was the tenor saxophonist of the 1980s and ‘90s, first as junior member of the World Saxophone Quartet, among the most innovative jazz groups of the era, then as leader of a dozen different ensembles of varying size, from duets to big band and everything in between, playing a range of music (much of it self-composed) from frenzied avant-garde to swooning ballads, his solos sweeping arpeggios in pleasingly jarring intervals laced with Sapphiric blue notes,... Read More

Prog rock and jazz fusion both have an otherworldly quality. I’ve never seen either live, so listening to recordings created with the intense discipline, musicianship, and complexity these styles demand, I’m often amazed that real people are behind the instruments. If you feel that way, you’ll find the late Chick Corea’s Elektric Band's latest live album, The Future is Now (Candid), a mostly accessible showcase of high-level musicianship combined with... Read More

The problem with records like this is that they tell you how mediocre sounding many of your records are—unless your collection consists only of "audiophile" records, of which there are two kinds: "sounds great, less filling", or more rarely, "sounds great, is filling". For younger readers, that's a play on the old Miller Lite commercial: "tastes great, less filling".McIntosh Sessions celebrates the company's 75th... Read More