Music Reviews: Jazz

It’s that time of the year again. The holidays take so long to arrive and then disappear far too quickly. Most music lovers have a complicated relationship with the sounds of the season. While some folks can’t wait for their local radio stations to switch over to an all holiday music format, others - myself included - find ourselves thoroughly exhausted by those relentless playlists come December 26th. It’s not that there’s a problem with holiday music because there... Read More

“Say hello to Caelan Cardello,” Rufus Reid, whose voice sounds about as deep as his upright bass, announces midway through the first side of this album. Hello, Caelan! And congratulations!This wonderful LP, the first that Cardello has recorded, arrived a few months ago and has been in regular rotation, as the saying goes, on my TechDas Air Force Zero. Hand-delivered to me in Washington, DC by Michael Fremer--the proprietor of this website, veteran audio reviewer and... Read More

Producer Nesuhi Ertegun suggested to Charles Mingus that he record a blues album. Obviously not a "my woman done up and left me" kind of "woe is me" blues album, but rather one that plied the dark, turbulent but often joyful waters in which Mingus navigated.In one interview with Ertegun Mingus said, “What I’m trying to play is very difficult, because I’m trying to play the truth of what I am. The reason why it’s difficult — it’s not difficult to... Read More

Backed by the all-star rhythm section of drummer Johnathan Blake, bassist Joe Martin and veteran pianist Kenny Barron, saxophonist Jerome Sabbagh steps up to the microphone and puts to analog tape his finest, most fully realized recorded musical performances. The quartet meshes as if it's been touring all year.The album title and title track as well as the cover and rear photos telegraph that what you'll be hearing is strictly "old school" straight... Read More

Just in time for the holidays, A Lovesome Thing—pianist Geri Allen and guitarist Kurt Rosenwinkel playing duets at the Philharmonie de Paris on Sept. 5, 2012, for nearly an hour, five tunes, mainly standards, unrehearsed—is a welcome and ravishing balm.The two had played together just once before—the previous July, when Allen briefly sat in with Rosenwinkel’s quartet at the Jazz Standard—and never together as a duo. Yet they make a perfect fit, Allen’s lush chords,... Read More

Sullivan Fortner is best known as singer Cécile McLorin Salvant’s main pianist, but he was dazzling New York jazz aficionados for a few years before that gig materialized, and, like Salvant, he keeps getting better—more imaginative, more ambitious, more open to taking big risks. His latest, Solo Game (Artwork Records), is two very different albums in a single two-CD set. The first, Solo, is an acoustic-piano solo session, covering a wide array of jazz and pop... Read More

Recorded in 1961 and released in 1962, Mosaic comes from an immensely prolific period of Art Blakey and The Jazz Messengers. Although the group’s lineup changed frequently, from mid-1961 through early 1964 it was unusually stable. The band was also one of Blakey’s very best: Wayne Shorter on tenor, Freddie Hubbard on trumpet, Curtis Fuller on trombone, Cedar Walton on piano, and Jymie Merritt on bass. The only change was when Reggie Workman replaced Merritt in 1962,... Read More

It's a mystery why Woody Shaw’s Blackstone Legacy is not a better-known album. Maybe it’s due to the timing. It was recorded in 1970 and released in ’71 (a commercial low point for jazz) on two LPs (it was hard enough to sell one), and Shaw himself was not a big name. This was his debut as a leader, though the young trumpeter—just 26 years old—had appeared on 20 albums as a sideman, to Larry Young, Hank Mobley, McCoy Tyner, Eric Dolphy, Andrew Hill, Chick Corea,... Read More

Pharoah Sanders’ 1977 album Pharoah is one of beauty and contentment, of family and love. You could even call it relaxed, a term unfit for his other 60s and 70s classics. The story behind it, however, is one of bitterness and disappointment—a complete contrast to the record’s majestic sound.The saxophonist, who’d not entered the studio for at least three years, found himself and his band in a large, concrete room with minimal adornment and a rather primitive recording... Read More

Binging Ornette Coleman’s discography, from his early Contemporary recordings to his historic Atlantic period then the Blue Note releases and beyond, is a truly enriching experience. One hears how his sound developed over his first decade of recordings, how certain musicians fit in his groups, how he started exploring other instruments beside his usual alto sax. Last year, Blue Note’s Tone Poet series released Round Trip, a 6LP box set containing his mid-late 1960s... Read More

Aaron Diehl & the Knights’ Zodiac Suite may be the most important album of the year, but because “important” is such a wearying word, implying obligation and cryptic boredom, I should quickly add that it’s also an album of joy, swing, and surprise.It is the first complete, professional recording of Mary Lou Williams’ orchestral-jazz composition of that title, and therein lies a story.Williams, who died in 1981 at the age of 71, was a pianist and composer who... Read More

It could be a violent musical shock for a young jazz enthusiast in the early 1960s to discover 1957's "brilliant corners" after being introduced to Thelonious Monk on one of his later Columbia albums like 1963's "Criss-Cross". I speak from personal experience.I'd bought Criss-Cross when it was first released. It was my first Monk album. I knew nothing about Monk but I liked his name. I thought it and Monk were pretty wild. The record... Read More

Monk's Music by the Thelonious Monk Septet was recorded in 1957, simultaneously in mono and stereo. A new mono reissue showcases the importance of microphone placement and recording methodology.

Charles Mingus’ format as a deeply spiritual, playfully inventive and stylistically uninhibited composer, bassist and bandleader is very much in evidence on Changes: The Complete 1970s Atlantic Recordings, an 8 LP (or 7 CD) box set of his late-era recordings for the label. 

Darcy James Argue has evolved over the past 15 years, into one of our era’s great big-band composers and leaders, second only to Maria Schneider and, increasingly, a force worth taking on the same level of seriousness. His 4th and latest album, Dynamic Maximum Tension—his first in six years and his debut on the Nonesuch label—is his best to date: a work of stunning versatility and complexity, but thoroughly accessible, borderline passionate, for all its intricate maneuvers.