Photo by John Morris When you first hear 28-year-old Sean Costello with his soulful, emotive voice and his tasty guitar licks, it’s tempting to compare him to Jonny Lang. Born less than two years apart and both making their proper debut albums at the age of sixteen, the comparisons betweenRead More

photo by Jack Vartoogian The first thing that is usually said about Jane Ira Bloom is that she is the rare jazz saxophonist who plays the soprano sax…exclusively. With so many prominent forebears who made made memorable music on the straight horn ranging from John Coltrane to Dave Liebman, itRead More

by Pico In the wild world of underground instrumental music, Marco Benevento is a newcomer as a leader, but he’s no stranger to the scene. The thirty-year old Berklee School of Music grad studied jazz piano under Joanne Brackeen, Kenny Werner and Brad Mehldau and set up shop in NewRead More

This go around of Quickies includes some records promoted by my illustrious Blogcritics colleagues Josh Hathaway, Mark Saleski and Michael J. West. Since they were causing a major (well, in Saleski’s case, minor) ruckus over these recent releases, I of course had to go find out what the big dangedRead More

Photo by Leslie Lyons by Pico Out of the thickets and marshes northeast Florida from which Lynyrd Skynyrd and Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers were spawned comes another group bringing a different take on the great music of the South: the trio that calls itself Swamp Cabbage. Swamp Cabbage isRead More

The composer and pianist from Zurich by the name of Nik Bärtsch and his band Ronin have just this week released their second major-label record. And even with having had the benefit is listening to Holon for a few weeks, now, it’s hard to tell if this record is supposedRead More

by S. Victor Aaron The first Quickies of 2008 is all that jazz. More precisely, it’s all jazz. Or variants of jazz. That is, if you don’t count the last entry, which is soul-funk. Got it? Good, let’s get started… Pat Metheny Trio Day TripToday is supposed to be theRead More

by Pico Here’s where it all started… Pianist Keith Jarrett, double-bassist Gary Peacock and drummer Jack DeJohnette make up the threesome that today is the gold standard of trio jazz. You’ve might have even seen me effuse about them in the past a time or two. And this month marksRead More

The Preservation Hall Jazz Band, perhaps the very face of New Orleans music, shoulders a heavy burden on “The Hurricane Sessions” in trying to convey the sweeping emotions surrounding Katrina. So much happened away from those familiar wooden benches at 726 St. Peter St. in the dusty room known asRead More

photo by Jason Thrasher by S. Victor Aaron No band today epitomizes Southern rock more precisely than Athens, Georgia’s Drive-By Truckers. Sometimes they sound even more Dixie than Skynard, The Marshall Tucker Band or the Allman Brothers. Not only do they possess the rough and tumble sound of their forebearsRead More