Music Reviews: Jazz

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

Based on some of the comments on this site under the original announcement of these UHQR Bill Evans releases you might think the subtitle quote was someone's reference to Analogue Productions Chad Kassem, but it's actually from annotator Ira Gitler's original liner notes for Sunday at the Village Vanguard. His point was that being a jazz critic doesn't mean he can't melt into the music and drop the analytical side of his reviewer brain. These... Read More

In need of a feel good story? Here it is. There's even a hi-fi system tie in. The story as told in the booklet by Ricky Riccardi, Director of Research Collections for the Louis Armstrong House Museum (and author of three Armstrong biographies) begins almost a year after this BBC performance with Louis at home recuperating from two hospital stays playing for guests his new Tandberg reel to reel tape recorders his wife Lucille had installed as a surprise while he... Read More

On 1974's Court and Spark Joni Mitchell cautiously dipped her musical toes into the jazz pool, adding some studio players like Milt Holland, Wilton Felder and Tom Scott to the arranging mix and capping the record with a sly, startling cover of Wardell Gray and Annie Ross's "Twisted" found originally on Lambert, Hendricks & Ross!: The Hottest New Group in Jazz (Columbia CS 8198). Cheech and Chong added some of their zany comic commentary to the... Read More

It may seem odd for Blue Note to reissue Jason Moran’s Ten on two LPs as part of its Classic Vinyl series. For one thing, it was recorded in 2010, a bit recent to be deemed a classic. For another, contrary to the “hype sticker” (and unlike most titles in the series), it was not “mastered from the original analog tapes,” as the album was recorded digitally. (Blue Note has since acknowledged the error.) Nonetheless, the album fits the category. The sound quality, though... Read More

Hi-Fi has long been very good to Duke Ellington, beginning in 1950 when long playing records and tape recording allowed him to finally deliver Masterpieces by Ellington an album of previously impossible to release to the home listening public, live concert length arrangements of his most popular and enduring compositions. Until then only attendees of his live concerts got to hear them.Finally Ellington was freed from the constraints of the three minute 78rpm... Read More