by Mark Saleski This is a certified jazz/funk/power trio bomb. With Vernon Reid on guitar, Jamaaladeen Tecuma on bass, and G. Calvin Weston on drums, there is not a flabby moment on this record. Many people know Reid from his fire-spitting days with Living Colour. If you weren’t paying attentionRead More

André Vasconscellos is, like Leonardo E.M. Cioglia, a forward thinking acoustic bassist and composer from Brazil. 2 is, you guessed it, his second album, but the first one released in the U.S. Heading up a five or six piece band (depending on whether Torcuato Mariano’s guitar is included), Vasconscellos leadsRead More

by Mark Saleski Listeners come to jazz from many directions. They may have a natural attraction to it. Jazz may have been the predominant music playing on their parents’ home stereo You May Also Like: Bill Lloyd – Feeling the Elephant (1987): Forgotten Series Richard Lloyd Giddens Jr. – MimosasRead More

The young man pictured on the CD cover looks barely out of his teens and in fact it’s the picture of a twenty-year-old Bryan Carter, and drummer and composer out of Chicago and a junior a Juilliard at the time of the album’s recording last December. But everything else aboutRead More

We’ve raved before about the thrilling pyrotechnic brilliance of Alex Machacek, one of the most exciting new voices in fusion guitar right now. You May Also Like: Nick Finzer, “Waking Up” from ‘Dreams, Visions, Illusions’ (2023): One Track Mind

If you’re a jazz fan in the Houston, Texas, area, you’ve surely heard of saxophonist Woody Witt. A tireless music educator around town, the manager and artistic director of one of Houston’s few jazz clubs, and a recording artist in his own right, Witt has a long list of credentialsRead More

by Mark Saleski There’s this notion in the world of sculpture that the artist is merely freeing the shape locked within the raw source material. You May Also Like: David S. Ware & Matthew Shipp Duo – Live In Sant’Anna Arresi, 2004 (2016)

You’d think that a guy who possess impeccable tone and technique on the alto sax, has starred in the Toshiko Akiyoshi Jazz Orchestra and the Mingus Big Band, has led solid straight ahead records of his own for almost 25 years would be a household name in jazz circles. YouRead More

by Mark Saleski Vertical Vision would remind me of Weather Report even if it didn’t contain a smokin’ reading of “Boogie Woogie Waltz.” Honest!! You May Also Like: Gerry Gibbs & Thrasher People – Weather Or Not (2017) ‘Elegant People: A History of the Band Weather Report,’ by Curt Bianchi:Read More

Pianist Vincent Lyn puts a groove into Oliver Nelson’s classic lead-off number from his Blues And The Abstract Truth masterwork. You May Also Like: Vincent Meissner Trio, “Young Folks” from ‘Wille’ (2023): One Track Mind Joe Sofra, “One of Those Things” (2020): One Track Mind