It takes daring for a producer to lead off a recording with a ballad. When that producer is Marc Free of Posi-Tone Records, a label known for scorching hard bop, the album particularly demands attention. With Green Thumb (Posi-Tone Records, 2023), pianist David Ake generously provides a varied program of surprising, even eccentric, choices that resolve with […]
For the last quarter of the 20th century, Italian labels Black Saint and Soul Note issued an influential series of recordings by Black American artists, including the World Saxophone Quartet and its members Hamiet Bluiett, Julius Hemphill, Oliver Lake, and David Murray. These records were hardly blowing sessions, but their loose-limbed vibe brought the expressive […]
For April, Brian Kiwanuka and Rob Shepherd provide capsule reviews of four recordings by saxophonists who are pushing music in new directions: Ingrid Laubrock’s The Last Quiet Place (Pyroclastic, 2023) [which you can also read more about here], James Brandon Lewis’ Eye of I (Anti, 2023), Ben Wendel’s All One (Edition, 2023), and John Zorn’s New Masada Vol. 2 (Tzadik, […]
For March, Brian Kiwanuka and Rob Shepherd provide capsule reviews of three recordings – Cécile McLorin Salvant’s Melusine (Nonesuch, 2023), Tomas Fujiwara’s March On (Firehouse 12, 2023), and Rubin Kodheli’s Departure (self-release, 2023)- and a SXSW performance venue – the Qobuz Sessions at KMFA Studios. Cécile McLorin Salvant- Melusine Cécile McLorin Salvant’s Mélusine is the first Salvant album […]
For February – just under the wire – we provide capsule reviews of recent works with an eye towards avant-garde expressionism. Two of the selections explore the contributions of legends of the music, while the others showcase the voices of younger practitioners of the craft. For this month, only one of these albums – Mat […]
The fourth cut on Thumbscrew’s Multicolored Midnight (Cuneiform, 2022) is entitled “Shit Changes.” You don’t have to be a climate scientist or Sam Bankman-Fried to appreciate the truth of that phrase, and it could just be another of bassist Michael Formanek’s cheekily subversive titles. Yet despite ten years of consistently provocative and satisfying music making, the cooperative […]
With the start of a new year, we also start a new feature on this site. These capsule reviews aim to provide very brief reviews – a few hundred words at most – of albums of note which have come out around the month at issue. For this month, only one of these albums – […]
“From the snowy, windswept peaks of Lapland to the desert of the Empty Quarter, Three Seconds | Kolme Toista is an adventure unlike any other!” Okay, that’s not Jussi Reijonen’s stated program behind Three Seconds | Kolme Toista (Challenge Records, 2022), which is at once more ambitious and more personal. Yet the music conceived by the Boston-based […]
In an interview with Ethan Iverson on his Do the M@th blog, writer Ben Ratliff related an anecdote that Paul Motian once told him. “Hank Jones said to [Motian] one day, after they’d been playing, ‘I know your secret.’ [Ratliff] said, ‘Oh yeah? And what do you think he meant?’ And [Motian] said, ‘I don’t […]
Did any artist have a better 2021 than Tyshawn Sorey? The 2017 MacArthur Fellow was the subject of a New York Times Magazine profile, premiered recordings of two large ensemble compositions, and received acclaim for albums with saxophonist Hafez Modirzadeh, DJ/producer King Britt. Not to mention his role in the powerful trio with pianist Vijay […]
