by Pico Of all the sax-organ-sousaphone-drums ensembles out there, John Ellis & his Double-Wide ensemble really do stand out. That might be because there aren’t any other such ensembles out there. To get to this point where he’s leading such an unusual combo, North Carolina native John Ellis had beenRead More

After arriving in New York City in 2001 and woodshedding as a notable sideman, composer and more recently, producer, a jazz keyboard player is ready to put his best foot forward. Chicago-born Sam Barsh is a name that’s only come up in conversations about the current jazz scene in theRead More

by Pico He’s the son of folk singer Leon Bibb, nephew of Modern Jazz Quartet founder John Lewis, and was directly exposed to several legendary performers like Pete Seeger and Bob Dylan growing up. It would seem that Eric Bibb was destined to go down a similar path as hisRead More

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