by Pico So what do these three albums getting the spotlight on this Quickies have in common? For one, they all fall on the jazz side of things (no surprise there). For another, these are all April releases. Oops, it’s already May, isn’t it? It’s still not too late toRead More

“The Tony Bennett/Bill Evans Album” remains, for me, one of the three or four most engrossing vocal jazz recordings — along with Sinatra’s Jobim collaboration, Ella performing with Satchmo and Nat “King” Cole’s “After Midnight.” But what made the initial Bennett/Evans project, and its follow up — 1976’s “Together Again”Read More

“Live at Montreux,” which focuses on tunes from Wayne Shorter’s then-new album “High Life,” might have been just another night in a lifetime of concert dates — if not for the former Miles Davis sideman’s still prodigious, almost hypnotic ability on the sax. That, and some bonus cuts from MontreuxRead More

A lot of best and most successful jazz artists come from the best music programs: Berklee, Manhattan School of Music, and Julliard, have all produced countless musicians who’ve gone on to make big impacts on jazz. But when talking about fertile breeding grounds for jazz greats, the University of NorthRead More

Marcus Roberts has burst back onto the jazz landscape, 11 years after his last session, with “New Orleans Meets Harlem, Vol. 1” – one of the Florida-born pianist’s most celebrated recordings. A rich and explorative combining of styles from across the legacy, Roberts’ record nevertheless retains its uniquely Southern voiceRead More

This installment of Quickies is aimed at introducing to you, Dear Reader, some amazing jazz musicians who may not have shown up on your radar screen yet: Jake Hertzog Chromatosphere Here’s a guitarist who is a 2007 graduate of Berklee, won the Montreaux Jazz Guitar Competition the prior year, cameRead More

Like Dave Holland, Derrick Gardner is following the axiom of “more is…” more. Allow me to explain… One of the hottest jazz combos of the last decade has been the Dave Holland Quintet. Recently, Holland decided to shake things up a bit and expanded his quintet to a sextet. TheRead More

by Nick DeRiso  To think, we almost never heard Carmen McRae sing these songs. Even though she was an early acolyte of Billie Holiday, McRae was at first better known as a pianist. (In fact, upon meeting her, Holiday was said to be so impressed that she recorded McRae’s “DreamRead More

by S. Victor Aaron Late last year I covered a new release by David Weiss’ New Jazz Composers Octet, The Turning Gate. The names found in this band aren’t household names, but the high level of musicianship and composition writing savvy by every member of this collective nevertheless makes thisRead More

Cassandra Wilson, unlike so many, never turns a cover tune into a math problem — trying to get it too note perfect, or make it add up. Instead, her hypnotic, sensuous contralto transforms other people’s work, often giving it a power and meaning never dreamt of before. That’s writ largeRead More