James McMurtry, we know now, had only just begun making steel-toe tapping records that take a while to sink in.

by Pico Joey deFrancesco. Tony Monaco. Larry Goldings. Barbara Dennerlein. All at the forefront of the current generation of jazz organists and heirs to the mantle of Jimmy Smith, Charles Earland and Jack McDuff. Oh yeah, there’s one more notable: Sam Yahel. But with the release this week of hisRead More

My list of the best swan song jazz recordings is in need of an update. Michael Brecker’s posthumously released ‘Pilgrimage’ is a deserving addendum.

I tried but, damnit, I just couldn’t ignore Fear Of A Blank Planet any longer. Whenever someone asks me who among the current crop of prog rock bands they should explore, Porcupine Tree is always on the top of my list. While I enjoy Yes-reincarnated outfits like Spock’s Beard, PTRead More

A few months ago we bemoaned the dearth of talent promoted by record labels while there’s an abundance of it out there unsigned, and put forth Vancouver’s own Heidi McCurdy as an example of overlooked artistry. About three hundred miles south in Portland, Oregon is yet another diamond in theRead More

Back in January we covered two of JLP’s albums from the early eighties at once, to examine a turning point in this French violinist’s approach to jazz-rock. This time around, there’s a brand new release to examine and twenty-five years later, Ponty is still effectively leveraging much of the sameRead More

Sometimes a record doesn’t smack you across the head on the first listen but at some point…maybe that 3rd or 4th listen…it hits you: “Damn! This is some well made, well played music!” That’s how it was with me for Joel Frahm’s new release, We Used To Dance. Frahm isn’tRead More

by S. Victor Aaron Since the mid-sixties, jazz musicians have sought to combine electronic instruments with jazz to create something new and fresh sounding. The most obvious result of this mix is called fusion, but others have managed to do it taking different approaches that uses these instruments to actuallyRead More

In anybody else’s hands, this new Mavis Staples album would have been a museum piece, interesting but ultimately dust-covered and remote. Not that “We’ll Never Turn Back” (to be issued on Tuesday by Anti- records) doesn’t have plenty of right things to say, and certainly plenty of righteous things, inRead More

For well over a decade, Medeski, Martin and Wood (henceforth referred to as “MMW”) has been to acid jazz what Crosby, Stills & Nash is to folk-rock. A group at the top of the heap consisting of three extraordinary talents, and whose main releases are richly supplemented with temporary configurationRead More