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 […]

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 ESSENTIAL RECORDING
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If you’ve never heard Charles Mingus before, Modern Jazz Symposium is a great place to start. It’s utterly accessible, and yet it contains all of the earmarks of what makes Mingus special.
Although free jazz had not officially been invented yet, there are free sections in this music. Mingus’ aesthetic was fluid. […]

JAZZBO NOTES ESSENTIAL RECORDING
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It would be difficult to overpraise Stepping Stones (released on the Columbia label). Where do even start? The killer rhythm section of pianist Onaje Allan Gumbs, bassist Clint Houston, and drummer Victor Lewis? This music swings like mad. Or do you mention the awesome discovery of the criminally overlooked tenor saxophonist […]

JAZZBO NOTES ESSENTIAL RECORDING
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Sadly, Pilgrimage was Michael Brecker’s swan song before he succumbed to a rare form of cancer. He was very sick when he recorded Pilgrimage, but you would never know it.
In fact, Pilgrimage (on the Heads Up label) represents the flowering of a new phase in Brecker’s playing, which makes his death […]

JAZZBO NOTES ESSENTIAL RECORDING
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(Editors Update 12/8/08: I’ve decided to create a new category for non-jazz releases, so this review is no longer filed under Loose Talk.)
You might wonder what this review is doing filed under Loose Talk. The reason is that Our Man In Havana (issued on the Fantasy label) is not jazz.
Now, […]

JAZZBO NOTES ESSENTIAL RECORDING
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In order to appreciate Wide Angles, you have to approach it the right way. Brecker is not playing small combo jazz, in which you would expect him to interact extensively with the other musicians, such as violinst Mark Feldman. Wide Angles (issued on the Verve label) is a date like the […]

JAZZBO NOTES ESSENTIAL RECORDING
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Not everybody is going to love Live! (issued on the ECM label) the way I do. I think it all depends on your sense of humor.
Take the opener, Blunt Object. The first time I heard that tune, my stomach hurt from laughing so hard. After listening to it dozens of times, […]

JAZZBO NOTES ESSENTIAL RECORDING
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Hand Jive (issued on the Blue Note label) was the first of a number of groove-oriented releases that guitarist John Scofield put out that had a New Orleans second line feel to it and in my opinion, the best.
There are two main reasons. Scofield is having a lot of fun because […]

JAZZBO NOTES ESSENTIAL RECORDING
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John Coltrane’s producer, Bob Thiele, persuaded Coltrane to record this release (on the Impulse label) with Duke Ellington in an effort to quiet jazz critics who were horrified at Coltrane’s innovations, labeling them “anti-jazz.” While the reasons for the date might be silly, the music is anything but.
For some of the […]