Last year we touched on a solid release by Steve Allee, Colours, where the seasoned Indianapolis-based pianist found delight in turning from crossover jazz to honest-to-goodness straight trio jazz. Allee must have really enjoyed making that record, because here we are less than a year later discussing another new SteveRead More

Have I really gone this far without shining a spotlight on Grant Green? Wow. Grant Green is an all time favorite guitarist of mine. He was one of the few out there who was technically amazing and could squeeze so much soul out of each note at the same time.Read More

For this episode of Quickies, we stick mainly with the jazz genre with a couple of diversions to other styles found here and there. These new releases all start with traditional jazz, but our protagonists each put their own little twist on it. Our first entrant is a well-known quantityRead More

From time to time I’ve mused about reviewing one of John Abercrombie’s best latter ECM recordings called November from 1992. I may still tackle that one, but I need to put that write-up aside for now to muse about another, brand-new, ECM release titled after the name of a month.Read More

by Pico It’s a CD that might be best enjoyed with a bucket of popcorn and a box of Ju Ju beans. That’s probably the way Barry Adamson intends for it to be, too. Ever since his first solo album Moss Side Story from almost two decades ago, Adamson hasRead More

Since I enjoy listening to forward-thinking musicians of the NYC jazz scene and have discussed a quite few of them already, it’s perhaps inevitable that I was going to touch on trumpeter/composer Dave Douglas. The introduction of a new Douglas CD gives me the perfect excuse to do that. ToRead More

photo by Zack Smith by S. Victor Aaron The first thing you should know about the Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey is that there is no Jacob Fred in the band. The second thing to be aware of is that their music is not always jazz—at least not “jazz” in theRead More

Before they were the Crusaders, they were the Jazz Crusaders. And before they were the Jazz Crusaders, keyboardist Joe Sample, trombonist Wayne Henderson, tenor saxophonist Wilton Felder and drummer Nesbert “Stix” Hooper were kids growing up together in post-war Houston, Texas. By the late fifties, these burgeoning talents formed aRead More

by Pico For both the man and the music, it’s a story of three continents. Bronx native drummer Steve Reid has been everywhere and played for nearly everyone. He grew up across the street from Thelonius Monk and three blocks from John Coltrane. As a teenager he drummed for MarthaRead More

by Pico Of all the sax-organ-sousaphone-drums ensembles out there, John Ellis & his Double-Wide ensemble really do stand out. That might be because there aren’t any other such ensembles out there. To get to this point where he’s leading such an unusual combo, North Carolina native John Ellis had beenRead More