There’s not a whole lot of jazz performers who first started out recording in the 50s and are still doing so today, but as I listen to Cedar Walton’s latest The Bouncer, I’m a lot more apt to think how vibrant he still sounds than how long the 77 yearRead More

That Sidony Box, a French trio, has chosen to explore jazz rock is anachronistically interesting enough. But they’re doing it without the musical GPS of a bass — something that allows guitarist Manuel Adnot, drummer Arthur Nancy and saxophonist Elie Dalibert to wander around these wide open spaces. What theyRead More

When I listen to Rob Garcia’s new album The Drop And The Ocean, the same adjectives come to me as they did for his prior album, Perennial, which are “seductive,” “lyrical,” “well-conceived,” “well-designed,” and Garcia’s drumming being “sensitive” and “delicate.” What I’d probably could add to that is Garcia’s drummingRead More

You hear about musicians being moved to a new tribute by dusty old masterpieces, about timeless moments on vinyl that crackle and pop to life as reborn honorifics. Then there’s the jazz tango disaster Take Me Dancing, a 1959 recording by Astor Piazzola that is so irredeemably bad that itRead More

by Tom Johnson One listen to Shara Worden’s voice and it should come as no surprise that she’s actually a trained singer, pulling off with ease the kinds of things most rock singers can only dream of attempting. Worden sounds just a bit operatic — but not so melodramatic, neverRead More

by Tom Johnson Every time Grant-Lee Phillips puts out an album this happens: it comes out, I love it, and then it just falls into my routine. Whatever it is about Grant-Lee Phillips, he somehow has the right gearing to mesh with the gearing of my life with nary aRead More

A record of Brazilian jazz led by Brazilians and featuring three A.C. Jobim standards invites “been there, done that” responses, but the fresh, updated arrangements that pianist Gilson Schachnik and drummer Maurico Zottarelli apply to these and other well-worn tunes distinguishes Mozik from other such excursions into this style. BothRead More

You’d think that an acoustic jazz trio with an acoustic guitar would be done a lot more often than it is, but no, most jazz guitarists like to plug in. Not Fred Fried, though, and we found out with last year’s Core 3.0, his rich lyricism and incisive playing makesRead More

The Tierney Sutton Band learned something about themselves, and about this land, during their many travels for performances. These ruminations, actually begun before the group’s 2009 project Desire, have finally coalesced within the timeless and refined American Road — a slow-cured reconstruction of a dozen venerable favorites on the BFMRead More

A dizzying mixture of muscular, electric guitar-driven jazz ensemble playing and these intriguingly angular Balkan textures, this energetic follow up to the Slivovitz septet’s Moonjune Records debut Hubris builds on that success, even as it adds different musical shadings. See, this isn’t your typical chamber-rock; at times, it threatens —Read More