Last year’s Opening made me a believer in the trumpet wizardry of one Carol Morgan, who blazed through a set of originals and standards in a small combo without a piano. Her brand new follow-up Blue Glass Music follows the same formula, with perhaps a bit more emphasis on theRead More

by Tom Johnson A sadly overlooked band, the Trees got lumped in with the grunge movement in the early 1990s. What’s unfortunate is that, like fellow Seattlites Mudhoney, these guys were way better than what got popular. It’s a typical complaint, I know, but I dare you to listen toRead More

A mainstream jazz pianist leading a trio through a set of tunes out of the Great American Songbook doesn’t signal that the record is going to set the jazz world on fire with a cutting edge material and indeed, Out Of This World by the Ted Rosenthal Trio doesn’t deliverRead More

Composer Jason Kao Hwang, performing on both violin and viola, starts with a foundation of chamber jazz, and then blows it up. Hwang (Reggie Workman, Anthony Braxton, Henry Threadgill) is just as apt to set off an explosion of emotive, Eastern-themed motifs (as on the title track from Crossroads Unseen,Read More

by Tom Johnson 2004’s Equatorial Stars seemed like a reunion after 12 years apart for these two ambient giants. After all, the last we’d heard from them was on Eno’s 1992 album Nerve Net, but little did we know that they’d been working together the entire time. This album pullsRead More

by Tom Johnson 133t!11!! H4x0rd! w00t! LOL WTF?! OK! Pandering title aside, the concept was pretty cool: The usual NIN remix album that followed in the footsteps of a regular album, but this time it was accompanied by a DVD containing all of the multitracks for the songs — soRead More

by Mark Saleski Never heard of pianist Marilyn Crispell? I was first exposed to her work via Anthony Braxton’s momumental Willisau quartet recordings. Crispell has a unique style of play, which I put on the shelf next to Cecil Taylor and Keith Jarrett. This was her first solo record onRead More

by Tom Johnson The Wilco drummer turns in a surprisingly beautiful and effective minimalist classical drum suite reminiscent of the best works of Phillip Glass and Steve Reich. It’s not something that will get played a lot, and it’s probably not terribly original because it is territory that’s been coveredRead More

by Mark Saleski Anybody out there who has been paying attention to my writings may have noticed that the name Marc Ribot has appeared almost as many times as Pat Metheny. Though the two guitar players are nothing alike, they do take up a considerable amount of my shelf space.Read More

by Tom Johnson I think there’s an annual requirement that Keith Jarrett must issue some kind of musical good. Going into this release, there had only been a handful of years in his career that have not resulted in some kind of album under his name — 1969, 1970, 1978,Read More