by S. Victor Aaron Fresh, new talent worth listening to is often hard to spot. Good thing the folks at jazz label Posi-Tone Records specialize in bringing to our attention promising young talent who will keep the flame of jazz going for another generation. Their issuance yesterday of the firstRead More

by Nick DeRiso Luis Bonilla’s “I Talking Now” (NJCO/Planet Arts), from the first bristling blast of trombone on the title track, is dashing down a busy city street. It’s difficult to tell, at first, if he’s running away from or toward something. Whatever the apprehensions, you are quickly surrounded byRead More

by S. Victor Aaron He looks like a young Keith Jarrett, even hums along to his piano lines a little like Jarrett, but Jacky Terrasson is defying straight comparisons to anybody. This 1993 winner of the Thelonious Monk competition can conjure the big, train-like sound of McCoy Tyner, the cerebralRead More

by Pico Jan Gabarek. There, I had to get that out of way right off. A Norwegian saxophone player who skillfully blends jazz with folk music of his homeland…who else would come to mind so quickly? Probably no one. But to be fair to tenor saxophonist Karl Seglem, he’s workedRead More

by Pico Right about a year and a half ago, jam band extraordinaire Garaj Mahal wowed us with their nimble, creative offering w00t, which made 2008’s “Best Of” list of fusion records, and contained a killer track I thought topped all other songs in the fusion jazz category. Now inRead More

by S. Victor Aaron I freakin’ love the music of Miles Davis. I once named a dog “Miles Davis.” I’ve written tons about Miles Davis. Even compare most every artist who’s doing something cool and expansive to Miles Davis. And when a musician takes on a project projecting the musicRead More

by Pico I find that much of jazz is taking someone else’s tune and make it into something new. The trick is to do so without casting off the thing (or things) that made it such a great tune to cover to begin with. But who can take Joe Henderson’sRead More

by S. Victor Aaron German woodwind wunderkind Gebhard Ullmann and New York-based trombone titlist Steve Swell may come from opposing sides of the Atlantic, but when the two get together to make music, they’re in the same house of whack jazz. There are some 70 led or co-led albums betweenRead More

by Pico The call Aretha Franklin the Queen of Soul, but those too young to remember her will mostly likely know about the Queen of Neo Soul, Erykah Badu. Today she unleashes the follow-up to her dense and intense New Amerykah, Pt. 1: 4th World War (2008), which was oftenRead More

Like Christian Scott’s prior two albums, ‘Yesterday You Said Tomorrow’ is a jazz record that’s direct, deep and lives in the present.