by S. Victor Aaron Jon Hassell is an inventor of new forms of music – of new ideas of what music could be and how it might be made. His work is drawn from his whole cultural experience without fear or prejudice. It is an optimistic, global vision that suggestsRead More

Last year, keyboard whiz Marco Benevento caused a stir with his very first studio effort Invisible Baby. That record presented Benevento as a post-rocker who likes to mingle melodic acoustic piano with edgy electronic effects used to create a unique sonic presence; a sort of indie-minded Jim Brickman. Just oneRead More

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by Pico Mike Clark assured his place in jazz history for the severely funky rhythms he laid down all over Herbie Hancock’s 1974 fusion classic Thrust. His knotty beats managed to make me forget about his Headhunters predecessor Harvey Mason and they probably should have been patented. If you hadn’tRead More

by S. Victor Aaron Last year brought the welcome return of Enrico Rava’s 1975 masterwork The Pilgrim And The Stars to American shores for the first time in CD form. Only a few months later, we’re getting treated to a new set of recordings by Italy’s foremost jazz musician. NewRead More

by Pico A berim-what??? Yeah, that’s right, a berimbau. Indigenous to the northeast region of Brazil, this bad boy is a single wire-stringed percussion musical instrument that’s sort of like a bow with a hollowed-out gourd on the bottom of it and played with a wooden stick, with the toneRead More

by Pico On January 27, ECM Records presents yet another recording of Keith Jarrett, Gary Peacock and Jack deJohnette in concert. This will make it the fourth one…from 2001 dates alone. Prior to this performance in Tokyo, The Out-of-Towners, Always Let Me Go and one we’ve covered here previously, MyRead More

NICK DERISO: The blue-eyed soul template has been copied so many times that it can feel like a faded and calculating conceit, something singers do simply to attact a demo. Unless you’re Eric Lindell, a native of San Mateo, Calif., who not only aspires to a Van Morrison/Delbert McClinton-level ofRead More

by Pico In 1939, German immigrant Alfred Lion founded Blue Note Records along with Max Margulis as a label dedicated to signing and recording jazz and blues artists. Over the years, this label became a central part of jazz history itself, as it became the home for seminal recordings byRead More

by Nick DeRiso Masterpieces seem to come at us all at once, like epiphanies and summer storms. But the making of such things is more a journey than a lightning bolt, with ideas and elements to mix and match along the way. That’s the case with Dave Brubeck’s superlative 1959Read More