What better way to spend Halloween than with (as it’s lovingly referred to in the liner notes) “this thing“? “The Torture Never Stops” — a 24-song, two-hour blast of almost indescribably brilliant/crazy rock from an Oct. 31, 1981 concert by the equally brilliant/crazy Frank Zappa — affords us a uniqueRead More

by Pico At this time last year the sizzling straight-jazz band headed up by guitarist Dave Stryker and saxophonist/flautist Steve Slagle had a record out that we were making hay over, entitled Latest Outlook. The boys are back already with another batch of mostly original tunes called The Scene. AndRead More

by S. Victor Aaron It feels strange to evaluate a talented musician’s latest output knowing that he will have no more new recordings forthcoming. That was the situation last year when I took a gander at Michael Brecker’s last CD, Pilgrimage. Sadly, we’re here again, as Esbjörn Svensson died thisRead More

by Pico As far as jazz pianists go, McCoy Tyner is the living patriarch. As a member of John Coltrane’s seminal band of the sixties, a sideman on so many key recordings and, of course, a leader with his own substantial solo career, Tyner has long ago secured a significantRead More

I’ve covered a Martin and Medeski album, a Wood Brothers album and even an MMW children’s album on this space, but this is the first go around with a “proper” Medeski, Martin & Wood release. Radiolarians 1, which hit the streets September 30, is the first of a planned trilogyRead More

There is a grail-like anticipation to these recordings, captured during four live performances just as trumpeter Miles Dewey Davis’s career transformed from a twinkling light at dusk into remarkable super nova. Too, these aren’t your run-of-the-mill sideman constellations; they are, actually, all stars. Namely, the band features a still-rising JohnRead More

Bill Moring is someone readers of this space have come to know as the guy jazz pianist extraordinaire Steve Allee relies upon for holding down the bottom in his band. Moring is hardly “just” Allee’s bass player, though. Throughout a three-decade career, Moring has played in ensembles of all sizesRead More

A couple of years ago, I posed the question: is the Dave Holland Quintet the best jazz group working today? Today, the Dave Holland Quintet has been supplanted by the Dave Holland Sextet, and with last week’s unfurling of the Sextet’s first record Pass It On, we get to assessRead More

Missing in the eternal argument embodied in their 1970s lyric — Which one’s Pink? — was my idea that it was neither Roger Waters nor David Gilmour. Maybe there would have been no Pink Floyd, not really, without Richard Wright. That’s what I hear in “Live at Gdansk” with GilmourRead More

We think of him as a famous jazz guy. But those who knew Charlie Haden as a child remember him as a bluegrass prodigy in a traveling musical group of relatives.