Music Reviews: Jazz

Many have long forgotten, if they ever knew, but for a brief spell in the mid-to-late 1950s, André Previn was one of America’s most popular jazz musicians, at least judging by record sales, and his cover of West Side Story, released in 1960, marked his high point in that realm. It was his 6th and final album devoted entirely to a Broadway score—the first, in ’56, was My Fair Lady, which remained the best-selling jazz album for the next three years. It also marked pretty much his farewell to jazz, after which he turned to arranging unabashed mood music and then, in a total switch, to conducting classical symphonies.

In the mid-1960s, just as rock ‘n’ roll was displacing jazz as America’s foremost popular music, Blue Note Records took a bold but commercially disastrous foray into the avant-garde, signing such adventurers as Andrew Hill, Eric Dolphy, Ornette Coleman, Don Cherry, Graham Moncur III, and Cecil Taylor. It was a similarly risky move for today’s corporate-owned Blue Note to start reissuing some of these artists’ albums, a few years back, and on deluxe vinyl no less, but... Read More

In March, I wrote a rave review of Cécile McLorin Salvant’s "Mélusine", her second release on Nonesuch and the most unusual album that she (or any other singer on a major label) has ever produced: a series of songs adapted to a 14th-century fairy tale about a half-woman/half-dragon and the revenge she wreaks on a man who looks where he shouldn’t. Some of the songs were written centuries ago; others were Broadway showtunes, vaudeville ditties, or Salvant... Read More

Reissue annotator Thomas Conrad just about backs into his praise for this lesser known Gil Evans album but he gets the vehicle parked without incident and by the time you've finished reading, if you peruse the notes before playing the record, you'll be anxious to hear it, especially if like Conrad and many other Evans fans (count me in) you can't get enough Evans on record— whether he's covering Hendrix or arranging so many classic albums with... Read More

Why saxophonist Harold Vick's Blue Note debut as bandleader was also his last, isn't clear. It certainly couldn't have been because the session was a musical disappointment. Far from it! Maybe it's because the date produced an album closer to the hard charging warm up for an r&b review than what Blue Note was typically releasing in 1963. Vick had played with all here but trumpeter Blue Mitchell and all had played in or skirted the r&b... Read More

Live albums aren’t always my preferred format. Sure, there are certain tracks that I’ve grown accustomed to hearing performed in the live vein, but I’m not often excited about the prospect of an album “captured” in a live setting, or of a particularly excellent live recording. I’m primarily interested in music that’s created in the studio; that’s what I consider the recording artist's ultimate canvas. However, Hungarian guitarist Gabor Szabo is one of my... Read More

ECM is arguably the most influential jazz label since the heydays of Blue Note and Impulse!. The German label recently announced Luminessence, its first ever audiophile vinyl reissue series. The two first releases, reviewed here, are Kenny Wheeler's Gnu High and Nana Vasconcelos' Saudades.