Photo by John Broughton by S. Victor Aaron Like William Parker, Anthony Braxton and Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Ernest Dawkins is an avant garde jazz guy who doesn’t give a damn if the music he plays is dissonant or tuneful, it’s all about if it sounds right, period. By extension, the saxophonist’sRead More

by S. Victor Aaron Since very early on we’ve eagerly pounced on records that re-image that dense, impenetrable period of Miles Davis between about 1969 and 1975 when he first defined fusion jazz and then kept redefining it again and again. This is music that doesn’t come easily to mostRead More

Photo from www.BobbySelvaggio.com by S. Victor Aaron For a serious post-bop performer to take a leap into Grooveland, it can often be a risky bet. Will they be able to keep their artistic integrity? Will they even care? A couple of years ago, alto saxophonist Bobby Selvaggio made his secondRead More

Photo from Jos Knaepen/ amsterdamjazzagency.com by S. Victor Aaron When I first started the Stacks series last year, I had two formatting rules about it: each artist was to be allotted one paragraph each and there must be at least six albums examined. I’m bending both rules this time, asRead More

Here was Billy Joel: talented, confident and getting ready to bust out into superstardom.

Photo by Steve J. Sherman by S. Victor Aaron When reviewing Vijay Iyer’s sublime piano-only disc Solo last year, I tossed out my personal maxim that “when a great, small combo jazz pianist makes a solo record, it usually doesn’t signal that pianist’s arrival, it means he’s solidifying his legacy.” Well,Read More

by S. Victor Aaron A marimba, a vibraphone, a stand-up bass, percussion and a little kora. A little bit of American jazz, a dash of Caribbean and a side of African folk music, but not quite like any of the three. How sweet the sound. That’s the kind of soundRead More

photo from philadelphiaweekly.com by S. Victor Aaron One of Frank Zappa’s latter day live documents is called Make A Jazz Noise Here. Anyone who’s followed Zappa knows that while Zappa rarely really played jazz as we tend to think of jazz, a lot of his music adopted the exacting, open-endedRead More

photo: Natascha Rockwin by S. Victor Aaron According to Wikipedia, a gutbucket is “a stringed instrument used in American folk music that uses a metal washtub as a resonator.” There is even a “gutbucket blues” style of music that was played by those jug bands of long ago. And soRead More

Photo from NME.com by Tom Johnson Just a week ago, we were expecting nothing more than the usual – just distant wondering of when there might be a new Radiohead. It had to be coming soon, right? It’s been more than three years since they surprised us with In RainbowsRead More