by S. Victor Aaron Throughout all of the history of jazz, trumpet players were always in the vanguard: Armstrong, Gillespie, Davis, Bowie, I could go on. The common theme with the two fresh offerings go beyond the fact that they are led or co-led by trumpeters; these are releases thatRead More

by Pico Tuesday was pretty busy day for Manfred Eicher’s fabled label ECM Records, as this was a day when they are released no less than five CD’s. For this all-ECM version of Quickies, we’re going to take some fairly brief looks at three of these, the more jazz-oriented ones.Read More

by S. Victor Aaron Jon Hassell is an inventor of new forms of music – of new ideas of what music could be and how it might be made. His work is drawn from his whole cultural experience without fear or prejudice. It is an optimistic, global vision that suggestsRead More

by S. Victor Aaron It feels strange to evaluate a talented musician’s latest output knowing that he will have no more new recordings forthcoming. That was the situation last year when I took a gander at Michael Brecker’s last CD, Pilgrimage. Sadly, we’re here again, as Esbjörn Svensson died thisRead More

Earlier in the week we introduced in this space the topic of “Nu jazz” that’s all the rage in Europe, and has represented one of the frontiers of fusion jazz these days. One of the pioneers of this collision of acoustic jazz and electronic music is the Norwegian keyboard player,Read More

When it came time to decide which CD’s to include in my starters and alternates lists for 2007, there was a lot of agonizing over many of the choices. But my top choice came early and easily. In fact, it was all but determined by the end of May, afterRead More

Since new David Torn releases don’t come around that often–the last one came out in 1998–Christmas arrived last month to lovers of electric improvised music, such as myself. Mark Seleski’s review of Prezens whetted my appetite further as he described the album’s music as “the combination of ambient approach andRead More