“Our Highway,” the new multi-media project from the jazz quintet (trio + two reedmen) Cowboys & Frenchmen is a monument to the boundless power of creativity. Rather than merely record an album of their brilliant modern music, the group has made a film — a purposefully trippy film, befitting the notion of travel and motion...
Genres and categories are cool when you’re trying to sell something. But some of our most compelling musical artists don’t pay attention to the imperatives of the marketplace. They make what they make, and the grand bazaar of culture must sort out where to file the “product.” Ian Faquini (guitar) and Paula Santoro (voice), native Brazilians, explore the traditional...
The Brazilian-born, New York-based guitarist Ricardo Grilli’s new album, 1954, is a kind of inter-stellar journey through the cosmos. With our without a high concept to cohere the tracks, 1954 is one the best jazz records we’ve heard this year. Featuring cats like Aaron Parks (piano), Joe Martin (bass) and the magnificent drummer Eric Harland, you know the...
Imagine giving a PowerPoint presentation to a large roomful of strangers. Imagine that you don’t know the subject of your presentation until you arrive onstage. Now, imagine that the slides in your presentation are random nonsense images that range from inscrutable to scandalous. What do you say? This is the premise of the sensationally entertaining...
The pianist Laurence Hobgood, celebrated for decades as one of the world’s finest accompanist of singers, currently is stepping out into the light, leading his own trio. Of superstars. On drums, Kendrick Scott. On bass, John Pattitucci. Their album, “Honor Thy Fathers,” dedicated to the musical titans who inspired Hobgood’s virtuosity, contains several cover songs,...
Five jazz musicians walk into the living room of our house, the music room. They’re getting ready for a gig the following night at an area college. A concert. They each bring their own vibration to the rehearsal, their individual tone. Some cats are lighter and some are darker than others. Some project calm and...
God bless the Internet. Thanks to digital immortality, all the things we call “content” never fully disappear. It’s possible now to discover new programs that are in fact quite old — or on indeterminate hiatus. Our current favorite podcast extant is “Overview, with Rick Overton,” an hour-long conversation between the legendary improviser-comic-actor-writer Rick Overton and one...
On her fifth album, “All Hot Bodies Radiate,” Katie Bull continues to redefine the concept of “jazz vocalist.” She’s no chick singer. Bull’s instrument, her voice, isn’t extraordinarily powerful, plangent or peculiar, and she doesn’t project conservatory-trained technique and tuning. Yet her work mesmerizes and invites repeated listening. That’s because Bull is a singing poet, a writer...
Mostly Other People Do the Killing’s latest iteration, a quartet, is led by bassist Mopppa Elliott, whose modern bop compositions are featured on the band’s new album, “Mauch Chunk,” a rollicking, raucous dash through jazz history that’s firmly in the right now. MOPDTK’s sax man is Jon Irabagon, one the most exciting players in the world....
It’s been nearly five years since our favorite singer, Charmaine Clamor, released a new album. In the interim, she’s taken her much-noted talent and made it deeper, stronger, richer, imbuing her expressive voice with enhanced gravity. On “The Better Angels,” Charmaine sings 11 songs of hope, all of them connecting in some way to the higher...
Hope RekindledThis past week has given us more hope for our diseased republic than any other time in 50+ years of paying attention. Observing and participating in a long-overdue peaceful uprising, occupying the streets, feeling the righteous energy of people of all ages, colors, faiths, and wealth (or lack thereof), has…
Clarinetist Glenn Dickson, master of klezmer, has made a solo recording, “Wider Than the Sky,” that’s been on perpetual repeat at our home office. Using over-dubs and electronic digital effects, Dickson fills the aural soundscape with a rich melange of chordal textures supporting the melody. His celebrated virtuosity is subsumed here to long, elegiac musical...
