by S. Victor Aaron This article makes it twenty-three albums covered in the span of eight days, which put a nice dent in my backlog, and there’s just a couple more to go before turning our attention to the year 2009 in music. The batch of records covered here drawsRead More

If you look at the list of past winners and finalists of the Thelonious Monk International Jazz Competitions, it’s quite impressive: Aaron Parks, Marcus Strickland, John Ellis, Sam Yahel and Miles Okazaki, just to name a few. In 2008, the winner was an alto and tenor saxophonist from the PhilippinesRead More

For this installment of the 2009 roundups, we lasso those stray cd’s of jazz that’s really “out there.” Hmmm, I think there’s a term for that kind of music. Despite hard times—and it’s really hard for those musicians who choose to play music entirely for art’s sake as these guysRead More

by S. Victor Aaron Joe Morris is fresh-minded guitarist whose uncommon ideas about improvisation, interaction, time, harmonics and phrasing collectively combine to form a unique sound even within the “seen it all/done it all” world of New York’s improvised music scene. And he does it with a tone that’s clearRead More

by S. Victor Aaron Born in the Mississippi Delta town of Leland, MS just a few miles west of BB King’s hometown of Indianola, Wadada Leo Smith didn’t pick up a guitar and started singing the blues but his mark on music ended up having a worldwide impact, anyway. AfterRead More

by S. Victor Aaron Previte has from the start been a “go it alone” kind of guy and found success taking that route, a remarkable achievement considering that drummers usually have to first make their mark as a member of a band. He’s gotten his due in a wide varietyRead More

by S. Victor Aaron Last year we spotlighted a trio of CD’s that made up the maiden releases by a new record label, the artist-run collective Brooklyn Jazz Underground Records. A year later last June, there were three more BJU records to examine. And here we are less than sixRead More

Some might see the acoustic guitar as an apparatus for playing folk, blues, soft rock, and anything that’s smooth and gentle. Duck Baker prefers to see it as an instrument of limitless possibilities. Sure, Duck might have started out playing those predictable styles of music when he embarked on aRead More

by S. Victor Aaron The Two-fer isn’t a double celebration of a single artist, but rather of a single instrument: the trombone. I’ve always liked that warm, brassy sound with its slippery pitch variations that gives it a colorful, almost-human character. An instrument that has been there in jazz’s earliestRead More

by Pico Maybe you’ve noticed the trend and maybe you haven’t, but there sure seems to be a whole lot more of the fairer sex among up-and-coming jazz players. I’ve found myself covering a lot more jazz records by female artists lately, and it hasn’t been by design; there areRead More