Unsigned Bands

Vinyl

Turn Around Norman – We Turn Around (2011)

Members of Baltimore improv music combo Turn Around Norman have been around a lot of jazz greatness: Tim Berne, Michael Formanek, Craig Taborn, Gerald Cleaver, Dave Douglas and Darcy James Argue are but a few of the big shots members in this ensemble have performed and recorded with. You MayRead More

Vinyl

Lydia Salnikova – Hallway (2010)

The Ballad Of Bering Strait is a documentary that chronicled the story of young Russian music students who fell under the spell of bluegrass, formed a band playing it, and struck out to America — Nashville, that is — to find their fame and fortune there. You May Also Like:Read More

Vinyl

Frank Kohl Quartet – Coast to Coast (2011)

Frank Kohl approaches the guitar with an exuberant curiosity, but also a well-crafted ability — skittering from influence to influence without ever stumbling. He sounds like he’s having a ball, too. That’s led to an album called Coast to Coast that boasts a savvy veteran player’s satisfying structural logic, butRead More

Vinyl

Laura Ainsworth – Keep It To Yourself (2011)

Dallas, Texas-based Laura Ainsworth, though performing last-century throwback cocktail jazz, may have stumbled into a zeitgeist-defining moment with the opening title track here. Whether she knew it or not back in the recording studio, Ainsworth’s delicious tale of revenge exacted on a serial philanderer is perfectly of the moment YouRead More

Vinyl

Bobby Katz, with special guest Pat Travers – Lifetime Thing (2011)

At its heart, this is a piano record, filled with moving ballads that connect on a deeply emotional level. Elsewhere, however, Bobby Katz shakes things up considerably. You May Also Like: Clannad – ‘In a Lifetime’ (2021)

Vinyl

Christie Winn – Closer to Home (2011)

Singer-pianist Christie Winn, a performer who crackles with spontaneity, pushes Closer to Home into every corner of her craft. Her deft ability to sound both quiet and strong, rhythmic and yet lucid, soulful and still multi-dimensional makes the album a consistently engaging delight. You May Also Like: No related posts.

Vinyl

Juanita Fleming – I Come To You (2011)

Juanita Fleming uses her stirring life experiences to inform a new gospel-jazz project, I Come To You. Before turning her gift toward God, Fleming’s was a life spent around jazz giants, big-budget soundtracks and the stage. Each of those influences finds a place here, propelling the album into a seriesRead More

Vinyl

Clear – Never Falling Again (2011)

With Never Falling Again, Clear explores the devastation left behind as relationships end – yet somehow comes away with a collection of songs that’s startlingly beautiful. That’s no easy feat. You May Also Like: Dario and the Clear – ‘Optic Nerve’ (2021) Presley’s Beatles, “Can’t Help Falling In Love /Read More

Vinyl

Joseph Allen White – Things Change (2011)

Joseph Allen White, at one point during Things Change, lays out the central conundrum facing the heartbroken: “How do you make new tomorrows,” White sings during “Circle,” “when you can’t erase the past?” You May Also Like: No related posts.

Vinyl

Half Notes: Bryan Carter – Enchantment (2011)

The young man pictured on the CD cover looks barely out of his teens and in fact it’s the picture of a twenty-year-old Bryan Carter, and drummer and composer out of Chicago and a junior a Juilliard at the time of the album’s recording last December. But everything else aboutRead More