To say that Colorado-based pianist/composer Bob Schlesinger’s Falling from Earth (Digmatic, 2025) was a long time coming is a vast understatement. The project – the sixty-eight year old keyboardist’s leader debut – had been simmering for half a decade. Tracks were recorded in two separate sessions, Sear Sound in New York City and Coupe Studios […]
Danish guitarist Jakob Bro is the owner of the Copenhagen-based Loveland Records,, a label issuing two albums within a month of each other: the more recently recorded trio of Bro, trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith, and drummer Marcus Gilmore for Murasaki (Loveland, 2025), and The Montclair Sessions (Loveland, 2025), from a 2022 recording session that paired […]
We continue our conversation with Patricia Brennan on ‘Of the Near and Far’ by delving deeper into her compositional process for the album, writing for strings, graphic scores, and more. You can read the first part of our conversation here. PG: This is your first time recording your work for strings, correct? PB: That’s right. […]
For eons, humanity has looked up at the vastness of the night sky in wonder. The pinholes of light shining through the darkness evoke feelings of comfort and familiarity, even as things seem so distant and mysterious. The stars leave us facing some of the greatest existentialist inquiries: Who am I in the broader picture? […]
Stargazer (Sunnyside, 2025) is a reissue of an album by a trio of pianist Armen Donelian with bassist Eddie Gomez and drummer Billy Hart that first appeared forty-five years ago, in 1980. Originally released and distributed on Atlas Records in Japan, it was available only as an import elsewhere. Soon thereafter, Atlas went out of […]
By now, most readers know that the Jazz Detective, Zev Feldman, does not limit his archival work to Black Friday and Record Store Day. Recently, he unveiled the terrific Charlie Rouse Brazilian recording, Cinnamon Flower (Resonance, 2025). As the archival consultant for Blue Note Records, he has another great one – Horace Silver’s Silver in […]
Drummer/composer Phil Haynes constantly leaves listeners anticipating what he will do next. In the past three years alone, he has presented No Fast Food – his trio with Dave Leibman and Drew Gress, Transitions – a duet album with Ben Monder, the romantic piano trio called Daydream, the complete American recordings of Four Horns & […]
Music has a unique ability to convey emotions that transcend written or spoken language. Things lost in translation cannot be lost in sound. In the words of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “Music is the universal language of mankind.” Because of music’s cross-cultural power, it is easy to minimize a particular work’s origins. After all, if music […]
While it’s been done in pop, appearing noticeably pregnant on an album cover is a rarity for improvisation-based music. Indeed, vocalist and composer Sarah Elizabeth Charles’ Dawn (Ropeadope, 2025) may be one of the first. The album’s cover is striking – the artist in a stunning silhouette, leaving no doubt that she is indeed with […]
Saxophonist-composer Donny McCaslin is determined to move way beyond conventional concepts of jazz, jazz-rock fusion, or any label you want to ascribe to his music. Just when we didn’t think his music could be louder and more rock-influenced than I Want More (Edition, 2023), he kicks it up a couple of notches with Lullaby for […]
