March 28th, 2024
The Maria Schneider Orchestra at 30 Our greatest big-band composer's greatest hits, for the first time on vinylBy: Fred Kaplan
Maria Schneider is the preeminent big-band composer and leader of our time. She’s been at it for a little over 30 years, recorded nine albums in that span, and this, her 10th, Decades—a lavishly packaged, limited-edition three-LP boxed set, on the Artist Share label—is a celebration, a sort of best-of anthology tracing her evolution. It also marks the first time any of her work has been pressed on vinyl, in this case 180-gram vinyl, the lacquers cut by Chris Bellman... Read More
March 23rd, 2024
1972 Alice Coltrane Concert Finally Released Fifty Two Years Later what a story!By: Michael Fremer
Why didn’t “The House That ‘Trane Built” release this Alice Coltrane record when it was originally recorded in Carnegie Hall February21st, 1971? It couldn’t have been because the musicians accompanying her weren’t worthy: Pharoah Sanders, Archie Shepp, Jimmy Garrison, Cecil McBee, Ed Blackwell, Clifford Jarvis and two lesser knowns. It wasn’t because it was poorly recorded. The engineer was David Jones, best known for recording the two classic Bill Evans Trio’s... Read More
March 15th, 2024
Anthony Wilson Meets The D.K. Rhythm Section? at Hackensack WestBy: Michael Fremer
Yes, was a clickbait headline. Guitarist Anthony Wilson did not "meet" the rhythm section when last year they stepped into Kevin Gray's Cohearent Recording studio A/K/A "Hackensack West" to record this album live to two track tape, mixed "on the fly" as Rudy did. Wilson has been playing in Diana Krall's band for years with drummer Jeff Hamilton and bassist John Clayton, Jr.. Following this session, they were immediately back on... Read More
March 14th, 2024
Ethan Iverson's Fling with Modern Tradition The former Bad Plus pianist makes his grandest album yetBy: Fred Kaplan
Ethan Iverson may be best known as the original pianist for The Bad Plus, a trio that made an improbably huge splash in the early 2000s by grafting jazz rhythms onto such pop and punk tunes as Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” Blondie’s “Heart of Glass,” Aphex Twin’s “Flim,” and Abba’s “Knowing Me Knowing You”—and doing it with energy, wit, virtuosity, and genuine cross-genre feel for idiom: no nudge-wink po-mo irony. The group’s drummer and bassist, Dave King and... Read More
March 11th, 2024
"Afric Pepperbird" Spearheads Jan Garbarek's ECM Reissue Trifecta Early ECM barn burner by Norwegian quartet gets first vinyl reissue since 1976By: Jan Omdahl
Afric Pepperbird by the Jan Garbarek Quartet with Terje Rypdal, Arild Andersen and Jon Christensen was an early ECM touchstone, and the beginning of five decades of cooperation between producer Manfred Eicher, engineer Jan Erik Kongshaug and the four Norwegian players. It gets its first vinyl reissue since 1976 in ECM's Luminessence series.
Read MoreMarch 9th, 2024
Impex's 1Step Double 45 "Getz/Gilberto" Tells The Full Story Sonically And Otherwise a treasure trove of background information adds luster to a familiar recordBy: Michael Fremer
Have you seen the 2022 movie “Armaggedon Time”? It’s a coming of age movie set in 1980 Queens, New York about a creative, dreamer of a young man who wants to become an artist but his traditional Jewish parents are of course against it, preferring he become a “professional”. His musical tastes are rock’n’roll but after befriending a Black classmate, he’s introduced to Hip-Hop.Not that the movie is about music, but music represents the cultural crosswind at the time in... Read More
March 2nd, 2024
Herbie Nichols Gets Another Fresh Revival One of the coolest trios in jazz lays out previously unknown tunes by the not-quite-forgotten pianist-composerBy: Fred Kaplan
Herbie Nichols, who died of leukemia in 1963 at the age of 44, was a jazz composer-pianist of vast talent, wit, and virtuosity, but little luck. He recorded just four albums (three for Blue Note, one for Bethlehem), none of which sold well; his music may have been at once too formalistic and too quirky for its time. He had a playful style, not unlike Thelonious Monk's, who was a friend and contemporary, though Nichols' sense of structure and harmony was... Read More
February 26th, 2024
For a Good Time Call Cannonball a joyful reunion plus 1/2 of the MJQ & great sound make for an efficacious OJC reissueBy: Michael Fremer
The obi says the Adderley/Evans "reunion" was "Cannonball"'s idea, something I didn't know when I picked up a Japanese repress for $3.98 at Record Surplus back in the mid-80s during the era of the great "vinyl record replacement dump"—and what a great time it was for those who recognized the CD folly for what it was!The cover shot doesn't have Julian appearing all that happy posing with his horn in front of some art that... Read More
February 24th, 2024
A UHQR "Ballads" Joins the Catalogue squeezing from the tapes every last drop of sonic goodnessBy: Michael Fremer
If the task is to compare five releases of an album, which it is here, at least it should be an album worth repeated listenings, and of course Ballads is, though it's not up there with Coltrane's greatest recorded achievements. It can't be beat as a Coltrane intro record for non-jazz fans who need the melody. For the rest of us, while Coltrane's playing is straight ahead and wonderfully lyrical, McCoy Tyner center stage wraps his fingers around the... Read More
February 22nd, 2024
Joe Lovano's Late '90s Trio Brought to New Life "Trio Fascination," his analog wonder, on vinyl for the first timeBy: Fred Kaplan
Trio Fascination: Edition One—a 1997 piano-less trio session, newly mastered on two LPs as part of Blue Note’s Tone Poet series—is a magical album. First, the trio itself—Joe Lovano on various reeds, Dave Holland on bass, Elvin Jones on drums—was a one-time-only combo, the likes of which remains nearly unparalleled. Second, the music (all but one track composed by Lovano) is original, almost inexplainable, yet very accessible. Finally, the fact that this reissue... Read More
February 12th, 2024
Despite the "Turbulent" Title, No Seatbelt Needed For Henderson's Late 60's Milestone Title Hancock, Carter, DeJohnette and the late Mike Lawrence (on 2 tracks) make sublime musicBy: Michael Fremer
In his annotation for this 1969 Milestone release, Down Beat writer Alan Heineman makes a good case for why back then (and perhaps even now), the late Joe Henderson, whose sound, both sweet and gruff is instantly recognizable, was an underrated tenor saxophonist. No matter the reasons then, today he's far better appreciated as a leader and sideman on Blue Note albums (leader on five including Inner Urge, sideman on more than two dozen including Larry Young's... Read More
February 6th, 2024
IMPEX Remembers Kenny Dorham's "Forgotten" 1963 United Artists Release the one that got away.....By: Michael Fremer
The story behind this "forgotten" release and re-release is interesting, but not nearly as interesting as the music, which is a refreshing turn in a world of "undiscovered gems" that often turn out to be undiscovered for good reasons and not gems at all. Downbeat critic Ira Gitler gave Matador a well-deserved very positive review when it was first released in 1963 (Dorham was also for a time late in his life a Downbeat critic). Two things... Read More
February 4th, 2024
A Truly "Accessible" Don Cherry Record Reissued In the "Verve By Request" Series what's with those grooves?By: Michael Fremer
In a recently published New York Times piece titled "The Worst Masterpiece: 'Rhapsody In Blue at 100" the pianist/composer Ethan Iverson pilloried the popular Gershwin piece as "naïve and corny"—and those were among the nicer things he wrote about it. The online comments are worth reading but one published letter is wroth quoting here: "By calling the work 'the best cheesecake,' Mr. Iverson aligns himself with a long line of... Read More
January 31st, 2024
Andrew Hill's Music Made Fresh and New Ron Horton's wondrous double-LP is much more than a "tribute album"By: Fred Kaplan
Andrew Hill was one of the most remarkable jazz pianist-composers, a rare true original. His music is ripe with strange intervals, dissonant harmonies, and off-centered rhythms, yet the resulting sounds are riveting, often gorgeous. Imagine the lush tonal colors of Gil Evans, combined with the fierce cadences of Mingus and the jagged precision of Monk, and you get some idea of his music’s odd pleasures. Hill led a dozen recording sessions for Blue Note in the... Read More
January 17th, 2024
"Change of the Century" is a Fun Listen! Why are People Afraid of Ornette? Bones Howe engineered sonicsBy: Michael Fremer
While Rhino's "High Fidelity" series lacks a clearly identifiable direction or purpose—it seems to meander around the catalog without regard to time, place or purpose—there's one consistent strategy: each two record release has a rock title and a jazz title. Credit Rhino with chance-taking guts this round. Marquee Moon isn't exactly mainstream rock (though the reissue gives it that sound), and Ornette Coleman's music scares a lot of... Read More