by Pico The other day, I explained our lack of year-end lists that all good music review sites do by a still-bountiful stack of unexplored CD’s that deserved some checking out before I can put together a tally that looks somewhat informed. Even after this clearinghouse of an article I’llRead More

by Pico Chicago’s own Ramsey Lewis is part of a surprisingly sturdy fraternity of major jazz pianists who first started making records more than half a century ago. Like Horace Silver, Cecil Taylor, Hank Jones, Ahmad Jamal and Paul Bley, Lewis’ resilient popularity comes from doing things he’s done forRead More

by Pico We’ve heard and read so many times about how where a musician is physically has such great bearing on where he’s at musically. Some jazz musicians become vitalized, inspired, motivated by the hustle and bustle of the diverse, vibrant big city scene. Tenor saxophonist Tom Gullion is notRead More

by S. Victor Aaron This installment of Quickies takes a glance at three new offerings from HighNote Records. HighNote Reocrds, in case you didn’t know, has been around since 1996, a creation of former Muse Records founder and Prestige Records exec Joe Fields. As a longtime veteran of the wholeRead More

photo: The Picture Booth by S. Victor Aaron Last year came the debut of a promising young guitarist, composer and bandleader Ryan Blotnick, who was already thinking beyond conventional melodic structures and places intelligence over cheap licks. We took notice at the time, and Music Needs You received our praise,Read More

Russian-born Brooklyn-raised guitarist and composer Gene Segal may have released his first album Hypnotic only this past July, but there was a lifetime of intense schooling that brought him to this point. Having earned multiple music degrees, Segal also studied under established guitarists as diverse as Scott Henderson, John Abercrombie,Read More

by S. Victor Aaron Last year we spotlighted a trio of CD’s that made up the maiden releases by a new record label, the artist-run collective Brooklyn Jazz Underground Records. A year later last June, there were three more BJU records to examine. And here we are less than sixRead More

by Pico To say Anson Wright is diversely multi-talented is like saying that the sun is hot. This true rennaisance man who graduated from Princeton has drove taxis, built cabinetry, run a trucking company and written published novels and poetry. He also knows a thing or two about playing aRead More

Some might see the acoustic guitar as an apparatus for playing folk, blues, soft rock, and anything that’s smooth and gentle. Duck Baker prefers to see it as an instrument of limitless possibilities. Sure, Duck might have started out playing those predictable styles of music when he embarked on aRead More

by S. Victor Aaron Steve Smith is a man with a common name and an uncommon ability to beat the skins. Looking back at his entire career, that 1978-85 stint with the superstar arena rock group Journey during its classic period looks like an aberration to Smith, who has madeRead More