Photo from Gregg Rolie’s website by Nick DeRiso Gregg Rolie, a founding member of Santana and then Journey, is probably best remembered as this tiny speck playing keyboards in a sold-out arena. That makes the deeply introspective new EP Five Days, recorded live with just piano and vocals, an unexpectedRead More

by S. Victor Aaron A marimba, a vibraphone, a stand-up bass, percussion and a little kora. A little bit of American jazz, a dash of Caribbean and a side of African folk music, but not quite like any of the three. How sweet the sound. That’s the kind of soundRead More

A Fragile Tomorrow builds out from the country-rock synthesis of pathfinders like the Band and the Byrds – but there’s something else here.

photo from philadelphiaweekly.com by S. Victor Aaron One of Frank Zappa’s latter day live documents is called Make A Jazz Noise Here. Anyone who’s followed Zappa knows that while Zappa rarely really played jazz as we tend to think of jazz, a lot of his music adopted the exacting, open-endedRead More

by Mark Saleski In the recent Southern Music issue of the Oxford American, musician John Engle speaks of “The Vastness,” the idea that the world’s store of knowledge is so vast that “if you tried to take it all on at once it would crush you.” It’s true. And thereRead More

by Mark Saleski The music of jazz composer/pianist Matthew Shipp isn’t fairly described as “avant garde,” mostly because to a great many people, that categorization can be read as “I don’t understand this music, can we please leave now?” This wouldn’t be fair to Shipp because over the course ofRead More

photo: Natascha Rockwin by S. Victor Aaron According to Wikipedia, a gutbucket is “a stringed instrument used in American folk music that uses a metal washtub as a resonator.” There is even a “gutbucket blues” style of music that was played by those jug bands of long ago. And soRead More

Photo from NME.com by Tom Johnson Just a week ago, we were expecting nothing more than the usual – just distant wondering of when there might be a new Radiohead. It had to be coming soon, right? It’s been more than three years since they surprised us with In RainbowsRead More

Photo by Sandrine Lee by Mark Saleski HA! Made ya look!! Wait, you’re thinking…that’s not Justin Bieber…it’s Esperanza Spalding! Yeah, I just couldn’t resist a little GrammySmugness2011™ … except that I’m really listening to Pizzicato Five! I’ve been thinking about this year’s Grammy awards. Specifically, the “shock” of jazz bassRead More

Photo by Myles Boisen by S. Victor Aaron Imagine a conversation with three other people where topic…a theme if you will…is selected and all four of you are to converse on that topic at certain points in time. And then at other times, a random topic is chosen, but everyoneRead More