by S. Victor Aaron Another record by a jazz drummer? Heck yeah! Ulysses Owens, Jr. isn’t just a young up-and-comer percussion specialist with a radiant smile. Behind the cheerful expression is a serious commitment to his craft. A graduate of the world renowned Julliard School, Owens has been touring withRead More

When you read the liner notes to Matt Slocum’s new record Portraits, it’s full of effusive but knowledgeable praise from one of Slocum’s former instructors at the University of Southern California, where he earned a degree from the prestigious Thornton School of Music. That’s a pretty good reference, but itRead More

Photo by Maria Camillo by S. Victor Aaron Sometimes it takes a fantastic cover of a song to make you realize how good the original has always been. This One Track Mind is about one of those times. When I think of the eponymous Pat Metheny Group album from wayRead More

photo: Arne Reimer by S. Victor Aaron A couple of summers ago I was treated to the pleasing but discerning modern jazz found all over Torben Waldorff’s Afterburn. The great Dane guitarist/composer who resides in Sweden is a household name in our little ‘berg on the internet, and needs noRead More

by S. Victor Aaron In the promo video below, pianist Orrin Evans performs the first cut from his new album Faith In Action, and the camera ever so slyly captures a picture of Thelonious Monk in the background. The subliminal advertising is undoubtedly intended to suggest that Evans’ playing styleRead More

by S. Victor Aaron I’m not one of those critics who creates a “best of” list by merely dumping a bunch of names and titles. But I felt a need to explain that because this list of mainstream and modern jazz from the past year has 41 entrants on it.Read More

by S. Victor Aaron Eric Alexander is a tenor sax specialist who comes from the same generation of reed players as Joshua Redman, who he finished second to in 1991 in that career-defining Thelonious Monk Institute sax competition, when Alexander was in early 20’s. Since then, he has been extremelyRead More

by S. Victor Aaron This article makes it twenty-three albums covered in the span of eight days, which put a nice dent in my backlog, and there’s just a couple more to go before turning our attention to the year 2009 in music. The batch of records covered here drawsRead More

by Nick DeRiso Marc Copland has this welcoming, inward voice — cerebral but somehow completely accessible, in the way of the most enchanting records by Bill Evans from years back. But as quiet as he can be, it seems that Copland never stops playing. “Alone” is actually the prolific pianist’sRead More

If you look at the list of past winners and finalists of the Thelonious Monk International Jazz Competitions, it’s quite impressive: Aaron Parks, Marcus Strickland, John Ellis, Sam Yahel and Miles Okazaki, just to name a few. In 2008, the winner was an alto and tenor saxophonist from the PhilippinesRead More