WORTH A LISTEN
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As regular readers of this website know, I am a serious fan of bassist Eberhard Weber, especially his releases with the Colors band, such as The Colours of Chloe, Yellow Fields, and Little Movements. So, it doesn’t take much for me to pounce on an Eberhard Weber release.
Even […]

JAZZBO NOTES ESSENTIAL RECORDING
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Omar Sosa is up to his old tricks on Free Roots, trying to cram the entire African diaspora into every tune. Amazingly, it doesn’t just sound like a freeway pileup, which is due to Sosa’s amazing skills as a pianist, composer, and arranger.
For example, on Travieso, hiphop collides with Latin, Afrocuban […]

WORTH A LISTEN
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I remember hearing the tune Line Down, taken off of Paul Bley’s Fragments date, on the car radio late at night back in the 80s on National Public Radio. I was stunned by how well the piano of Paul Bley, John Surman’s bass clarinet, Bill Frisell’s guitar, and Paul Motian’s drums managed […]

JAZZBO NOTES RECOMMENDED RECORDING
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I have the suspicion that when bassist/composer Dave Holland was putting together his quintet, he was trying to achieve a format that would be possible to listen to passively while still being intellectually rigorous and allowing for exploration of new compositional and arranging concepts. In my opinion, he only half succeeds.
Holland’s […]

JAZZBO NOTES RECOMMENDED RECORDING
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Recorded on the 75th anniversary of the births of both John Coltrane and Miles Davis, this tour was obviously based on the model of Miles’ second great quintet, which Herbie Hancock was a part of.
This is not, however, a straight exercise in nostalgia like the VSOP Quintet of the late 70s. […]

JAZZBO NOTES ESSENTIAL RECORDING
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I’ve written a lot about Eberhard Weber as a bandleader elsewhere on this site. Pretty much any of his work with reed player Charlie Mariano and keyboardist Rainer Bruninghaus is well worth owning, and Silent Feet is no exception.
All of this work is basically Eurojazz. It doesn’t have a lot of […]

JAZZBO NOTES RECOMMENDED RECORDING
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Usually, I’m not terribly impressed by jazz vocalists, and Lea Delaria isn’t even one, strictly speaking. She makes her living as a lesbian comic and cabaret star.
So why am I even writing about her CD Double Standards? Well, Double Standards consists of covers of modern pop songs, which actually doesn’t sound […]

WORTH A LISTEN
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On Day Is Done, Brad Mehldau pushes his penchant for intellectualizing jazz to the limit and beyond.
Day Is Done mostly (thank God) consists of covers. Once again, Mehldau shows his veneration for the Beatles and Radiohead.
His cover of Knives Out keeps the spirit of the original, but is far more frantic. Jeff […]

JAZZBO NOTES RECOMMENDED RECORDING
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On Strange Liberation, Dave Douglas tackles one of the toughest problems in modern music — how to make the best use of guitarist Bill Frisell. The answer: don’t give him a lot of room to improvise in, unless you’re talking about impressionistic fills.
For example, on the title cut, Frisell is allowed […]

JAZZBO NOTES HIGHLY RECOMMENDED RECORDING
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It’s nice to see young people like Stefon Harris taking the trouble to really learn the history of the music (at least from bebop to the present). Besides having the chops on vibraphone, he’s integrated the styles from those periods into his playing, composing, and arrangements.
His arrangments on Black Action […]