Each of the year’s four Satoko Fujii records made our Best Of 2010 List. by Pico With the more accessible types of jazz out of the way in Part 3 and Part 4, this Best of 2010 series concludes with the least accessible stuff, the experimental and avant garde stuffRead More
Lucinda Williams brings a brave, riveting vulnerability to Essence — and, for me, it’s her masterpiece. Yet you are more apt to find it in the cutout bin at a big-box department store than at the top of most people’s desert-island lists. Perhaps the sensual melancholy of Essence was tooRead More
by Nick DeRiso Mark “Pocket” Goldberg’s Off the Alleyway, a rootsy Americana recording with the flickering neon-soul of a blues joint, stays well away from the beaten path. His sound is as eclectic as the country’s rolling byways, bringing in low-country pedal steel, back-pew harmonizing, the nostalgic wheeze of anRead More
Michelle V. Agins/The New York Times Maybe it hasn’t been talked about that much, but in spite of all the advances in the mastery the instrument led by Sonny Rollins and John Coltrane, the development and evolution of the jazz saxophone didn’t end with those guys. Many of the saxRead More
by Nick DeRiso A group of cross-country friends with day jobs got together to produce Rochester Express, this chummy, Woody Herman-style amalgam of galloping jazz joys. By day, the members of Rochester, Minnesota-based TakeTwo work as a cardiovascular surgeon, a respiratory therapist, and an IBM engineer. In this two dayRead More
by Mark Saleski Time to return to one of my favorite topics: Why do I like that? Have you ever engaged in this kind of self-debate? There are all sorts of ways to play. There’s the Top-40 angle: “Come On Eileen…Bawitdaba!? Hmmm…I better not tell anybody,” the Angle of PureRead More
Cassandra Wilson, who consistently defies convention as this restless chanteuse, doesn’t disappoint with Silver Pony — issued today on Blue Note as the long-awaited part-in studio, part-live followup to her celebrated Loverly. She has the vocal phrasing, the dusky intellect, of Charlie Parker and the elastic intuition of Betty Carter.Read More
by S. Victor Aaron What a stellar year it’s been for Posi-Tone Records. They’ve generated record after record of honest-to-goodness mainstream jazz done with taste, style, with exceptional sidemen and flawless production. After reviewing zero releases prior to 2010, we’ve now given our impressions on a dozen releases, eleven ofRead More
by S. Victor Aaron So let’s see… The saxophonist has played for such big names in jazz, soul and pop such as Nile Rodgers, The Crusaders, Aretha Franklin, Mike Stern, Dave Liebman and The Temptations. Eleven of his own records have appeared on the music charts. The trumpet player hasRead More
by Pico Last week, another Strickland made his debut. Enoch Jamal Strickland, better known as “E.J.” Strickland, has made his name as a drummer for notables that include Freddie Hubbard,
