Music Reviews: Jazz

Sasha Matson first came to the attention of many audiophiles with his 1993 Audioquest release "i-5/Steel Cords" (Audioquest AQ-LP 1013), which includes the most unusual "Works For Pedal Steel Guitar, Harp and Strings" and i-5" a paen to Interstate Highway 5, the road that in the late 1980s brought Matson from Berkeley to Los Angeles (the composer will probably tell me "paen" is the wrong word for his tribute, but that's okay).... Read More

In his Downbeat review of jazz harpist Dorothy Ashby's 1965 release "The Fantastic Jazz Harp of Dorothy Ashby" (Atlantic 1447), "K.D." wrote : "Flighty" has Miss Ashby gliding in a Wes Montgomery-like style of octave approach. But it's obviously very much her own creation." K.D. compares bassist Richard Davis to Segovia. What a well-written, perceptive and interesting review, I thought to myself. Then I looked in the box... Read More

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.

Zev Feldman's Jazz Detective label lived up to its name with the discovery of two previously unreleased and unheard since their first airing in 1979 on Dutch Radio, Chet Baker performances, released for RSD 2023 as a double LP set. Unlike many newly discovered recordings, this one's excellent sound matches the quality of the music.

Cécile McLorin Salvant has reached the point in her career where she can, apparently, get away with doing whatever she wants. Dreams and Daggers and The Window solidified her status as the preeminent jazz singer of our time. Ghost Song, her debut on Nonesuch Records, cracked open all genres, covering a range enveloping Kurt Weill, Kate Bush, Harold Arlen, a 19th-century folk ballad, and a half-dozen original songs, which matched the album’s standards for wit, swing,... Read More

No one knows why this Andrew Hill album recorded October 11th 1968 wasn’t released until 1980 as part of a Michael Cuscuna produced series. “Tone Poet” Joe Harley doesn’t know, nor, he told me, does Cuscuna. Harley posits a few possible reasons, none of which have anything to do with the music here, which in 1968 clearly was release-worthy. The vinyl revival/resurgence whatever you wish to call it has been a boon to artists like the late composer/performer/academic... Read More

In commemoration of Van Morrison's new album Moving On Skiffle, we revisit a past era of Van mediocrity via our archive review of 1996's How Long Has This Been Going On?

This recently re-pressed set of Nathan Davis live in Paris recordings should help create a new following for this somewhat overlooked American multi-instrumentalist, composer, and educator who turned down a Blue Note contract and an offer to join Art Blakey's group, remaining in Paris during the turbulent 1960s.

I got invited to a record launch party for Christian McBride's new album "Christian McBride's New Jawn Prime" held at Oswald Mills Audio's Brooklyn loft. "Conversations...." had been sitting unplayed for far too long so I figured I'd give it a spin to prep for the launch.McBride listening to his new album played back on the OMA K3 turntableI'm not sure if he'd ever heard any of his recordings reproduced on a system... Read More

Jason Moran’s latest album, From the Dancehall to the Battlefield, is a staggeringly ambitious work, nothing less than a stab at reconceptualizing jazz history, hoisting a fairly obscure figure—the composer-bandleader James Reese Europe (1881-1919)—onto the pantheon of major innovators, a project that forges new links and traces a new path of the music’s evolution, with Lt. Jim Europe (as he was also known) at the—or at least a—center.