I’ve covered a Martin and Medeski album, a Wood Brothers album and even an MMW children’s album on this space, but this is the first go around with a “proper” Medeski, Martin & Wood release. Radiolarians 1, which hit the streets September 30, is the first of a planned trilogyRead More

There is a grail-like anticipation to these recordings, captured during four live performances just as trumpeter Miles Dewey Davis’s career transformed from a twinkling light at dusk into remarkable super nova. Too, these aren’t your run-of-the-mill sideman constellations; they are, actually, all stars. Namely, the band features a still-rising JohnRead More

Bill Moring is someone readers of this space have come to know as the guy jazz pianist extraordinaire Steve Allee relies upon for holding down the bottom in his band. Moring is hardly “just” Allee’s bass player, though. Throughout a three-decade career, Moring has played in ensembles of all sizesRead More

by S. Victor Aaron Vocalist Lucia Pulido is perhaps not well known in America, but she when it comes to the traditional music of her native Columbia, she’s a real keeper of the flame. Her new CD, the third of hers as a leader, uses both originals and traditional songsRead More

by S. Victor Aaron James Taylor went through most of his career without putting together records that have a strong, overall theme to them. That’s changed of late: in 2006 there was a Christmas album and last year it was a live album with little accompaniment. This time out, it’sRead More

by S. Victor Aaron Moore never goes too long between studio releases; just last year we were here chatting up his then-new Close As You Get and now the Irish heavy blues-rocker is already back with another mixture of originals and classics, called Bad For You Baby. When Moore isRead More

A couple of years ago, I posed the question: is the Dave Holland Quintet the best jazz group working today? Today, the Dave Holland Quintet has been supplanted by the Dave Holland Sextet, and with last week’s unfurling of the Sextet’s first record Pass It On, we get to assessRead More

Missing in the eternal argument embodied in their 1970s lyric — Which one’s Pink? — was my idea that it was neither Roger Waters nor David Gilmour. Maybe there would have been no Pink Floyd, not really, without Richard Wright. That’s what I hear in “Live at Gdansk” with GilmourRead More

It was only a few years ago that I was lamenting the fleeting guitar talent in George Clinton’s early Funkadelic band who reached incredible heights as Clinton’s lead axeman on funk classics like Free Your Mind … And Your Ass Will Follow and Maggot Brain. Besides Eddie Hazel, there wasRead More

Sometimes you know if a CD is going to be good even before you cue it up and start listening to it. The first thing I that caught my eye when I opened up Michael Bates’ Clockwise CD was the note that it was taped live on a two-track recorder.Read More