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There can never be too many recordings from the early 70s featuring keyboardist Jan Hammer. At the time, Hammer was simply on fire. On John Abercrombie’s Timeless, he’s featured on organ, synthesizer and piano. Too bad he had to be playing with guitarist John Abercrombie. I’m sorry, but no way is Abercrombie […]

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Pianist Makoto Ozone can be a problematic musician. On the one hand, he has an unquestioned wealth of musician scholarship and his technique is hard to fault. On the other hand, he can fall prey to cuteness at times. On the other hand, sometimes his ambition exceeds his grasp.
The last time I […]

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Chick Corea is such a nice guy that sometimes I feel like a dick for criticising his music. On the insert for Change, he writes in his dedication: “To The Idealist, the Dreamer…To those who persist towards their goals of Betterment and Beauty…To those who truly Help, To the Artist in all […]

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In some ways, Bump is reminiscent of many other John Scofield dates. This was far from the first time he explored New Orleans funk, and it would not be the last.
The difference here is that, despite a fairly large cast of musicians (bassists Tony Scherr, Chris Wood, and David Livolsi; drummers Eric […]

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Music On The Edge is a bit of a misnomer for this live release from some very talented musicians. That title implies that the music contained therein is uniformly new and innovative.
In some cases, that’s true, like Jim Beard’s arrangement of composer Aaron Copeland’s Fanfare For The Common Man, which has […]

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Oddly enough, the most engaging composition on Secrets was composed by Gary Husband. (He’s not listed as playing on the track, either.)
Maybe it’s not all that surprising, though. I’ve found that Allan Holdsworth’s compositional ideas are as otherworldly as his guitar playing. The combination of the two can sometimes be too much […]

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With a cast of characters like bassist John Patitucci, David Sanchez on tenor, pianist Gonzalo Rubalcaba, and drummer Ignacio Berroa, I couldn’t very well afford to ignore Codes, the debut of drummer Ignacio Berroa as a leader.
On Codes, Ignacio Berroa is not content to do the usual thing Latins do when playing […]

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Chant represents the logical end point of the duet recordings of saxophonist Dave Liebman and pianist Richie Beirach. Over the course of fifteen years, Liebman and Beirach have been moving closer to concepts of 20th century classical music in their playing and further away from swing.
In Chant, the result is a sort […]

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There are few things more boring than listening to someone play standards like Satin Doll more or less the same way they’ve been played for decades, without a scintilla of originality, without one new idea. Taylor Eigsti is the polar opposite. When he plays a standard, he hits you with a new idea every […]

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On Question And Answer, Pat Metheny proved beyond a doubt that, technically speaking, he was as an adept a guitarist as anybody. Listen to his effortlessly flowing lines on Miles Davis’ Solar for evidence. Gone are the fudged notes of yesteryear — Metheny is as accurate as an atomic clock. He’s also […]