There’s a reason it took Boz Scaggs five years to complete the follow up to “But Beautiful,” a terrific, small-group collection of American songbook classics that debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard jazz charts in 2003. Scaggs aimed to add more instrumental complexity to his next recording, but was sensitive to the pitfalls associated with using a post-Connick, perhaps [...]

by Pico As far as jazz pianists go, McCoy Tyner is the living patriarch. As a member of John Coltrane’s seminal band of the sixties, a sideman on so many key recordings and, of course, a leader with his own substantial solo career, Tyner has long ago secured a significant place in the history of jazz. The one thing that [...]

by S. Victor Aaron Last year we gave a testimonial to a new small-group Carla Bley album that featured a uber-talented Italian trumpeter by the name of Paolo Fresu. But as good as Fresu is, he’s not yet the king of Italian trumpeters. That’s because Enrico Rava is still wearing the crown. Like Fresu, Rava has played for Bley—as well [...]

There’s so many records just coming out that I’d love to cover but there’s only time for three at the moment; next week promises more. Two of these three are what we like to call “baby boomer bliss,” in that even though they’re new, they conjure up the spirit of rock from the time when the later boomers were in [...]

by Nick DeRiso There is a grail-like anticipation to these recordings, captured during four live performances just as trumpeter Miles Dewey Davis’s career transformed from a twinkling light at dusk into remarkable super nova. Too, these aren’t your run-of-the-mill sideman constellations; they are, actually, all stars. Namely, the band features a still-rising John Coltrane. Also Bill Evans, Cannonball Adderley and [...]

Bill Moring is someone readers of this space have come to know as the guy jazz pianist extraordinaire Steve Allee relies upon for holding down the bottom in his band. Moring is hardly “just” Allee’s bass player, though. Throughout a three-decade career, Moring has played in ensembles of all sizes for big names like Dizzy Gillespie, Joe Williams, Mel Torme’, [...]

NICK DERISO: Funny thing about that modern-day romantic Harry Connick Jr.: Before this decade-old release, he hadn’t ever explored a song cycle about, and only about, love. Oh, Connick would take his shots, now and then. But always with a dash of popcraft crooning, light New Orleans funk or swash-buckling swing music following hard on its heels. “To See You,” [...]

There was, for a pairing of musicians so closely associated with other forms, an irrepressible blues feel to 1961’s “Bags Meets Wes,” reissued this year as part of the Keepnews Collection. That makes a chance meeting between Milt Jackson (longtime member of the complex, often formal Modern Jazz Quartet) and Wes Montgomery (who was just years away from turning his [...]

A couple of years ago, I posed the question: is the Dave Holland Quintet the best jazz group working today? Today, the Dave Holland Quintet has been supplanted by the Dave Holland Sextet, and with last week’s unfurling of the Sextet’s first record Pass It On, we get to assess how good Holland’s latest incarnation is. Holland, in case you’re [...]

NICK DERISO: Jobim’s bossa nova orchestrations — marked by feather-like rhythms and a freer song structure — provide the platform for Frank Sinatra’s most interesting late-period release. “I haven’t sung so soft,” the belter once joked, “since I had the laryngitis.” Stories of the way conductor Claus Ogerman struggled to get the sensual tempo just right for both men are [...]