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For a long time now, listening to each new Chick Corea recording has been a frustrating experience, and To The Stars is no exception.
Obviously, Corea’s abilities as a pianist have not diminished in the slightest since the glory days of the late 60s and early 70s. On To The Stars, Corea writes […]

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If you are looking for sophisticated, cutting edge jazz, Fenix ain’t it. But if what you’re after is sparkling Latin grooves and a romantic approach to the saxophone, Fenix just might be the ticket.
First off, the rhythm section is a bit overqualified for this sort of thing. You’ve got Ron Carter on […]

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What is it about getting old that turns fire-breathing young tenor players into Sonny Rollins?
Steve Grossman started out in a Coltrane bag, and spent much of the 70s applying this style to Latin and funk flavored fusion. But now, he’s playing mainstream jazz in that jolly, avuncular fashion that Rollins made […]

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Altered State (on the Heads Up label), the first studio album for The Yellowjackets after Time Squared, is a big step backward.
Time Squared was the first Yellowjackets studio album that featured Bob Mintzer on sax, and represented a remarkable break from the group’s status quo. Gone were the pancake washes of synthesizer […]

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At first listen, This Meets That seems awfully similar in concept to Scofield’s earlier Grace Under Pressure date, which was a trio with an occasional assist from Bill Frisell, plus a horn section. On This Meets That, Scofield uses his usual bassist and drummer, Steve Swallow and Bill Stewart, respectively. Frisell even […]

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Good Vibes is as close as Gary Burton ever has come to making a rock record. To Burton, that means lots of R&B vamps and hiring lame “rock” guitarists like Jerry Hahn and Eric Gale. To be fair, almost all the jazz guitarists attempting to play rock at the time, with the […]

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In a sense, Miles Ahead is only nominally a Miles Davis release. Yes, his lyrical trumpet style is unmistakable, but by necessity, the opportunities for serious improvisation are constrained by the elaborate arrangements by Gil Evans for a 19 piece band.
Let’s get this out of the way. Miles plays fine, with his […]

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Part of the problem here might be that I’m not a huge fan of Wes Montgomery (heresy, I know), but I’m not terribly impressed with Pat Martino’s Remember: A Tribute To Wes Montgomery.
For those who don’t know the story, Pat Martino had brain surgery in 1980 in order to correct an aneurysm, […]

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What is it about Randy Brecker’s 1987 recording In The Idiom (issued on the Denon label) that bugs me?
Randy Brecker is one of the finest trumpet players playing fusion or post bop, and nothing he plays on In The Idiom would influence that opinion for the worse. His compositions in the post […]

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Frank Kimbrough brings an unusual improvisational and compositional strategy to Lullabluebye (on the Palmetto label). He mostly sticks to pentatonic scales, diatonic scales, and passing tones, eschewing altered scales for the most part. His attack is also very unconfrontational. He tends to gently swing, leaning into his phrases. There is very little […]