Records offered for review to Jazz Journal in March-April 2025, including Pete McGuiness Jazz Orchestra, Theo Travis, Bugge Wesseltoft, Becca Wilkins and Savina Yannatou // Editor's pick: The Action 4s
Sharel Cassity: Gratitude (Sunnyside Records)
As a youngster in Oklahoma, Sharel Cassity’s heart and soul got captured by bassist Christian McBride’s debut studio album Gettin’...
Records offered for review to Jazz Journal in March-April 2025, including Joshua Redman, Scandinavian Art Ensemble (w. Tomasz Stańko) and Martin Speake & Will Butterworth // Editor's pick: Steve Holt Jazz Impact Quintet
Ben Webster: Soulville (WaxTime 772350-LP)
The swing-era trinity of Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young and Ben Webster really wrote the book on the tenor saxophone until...
Records offered for review to Jazz Journal in March-April 2025, including Georgia Mancio & Alan Broadbent, Harvey Mason, Bennie Maupin, Pat Metheny and Hedvig Mollestad || Editor's pick: Mehldau, Turner, Bernstein
Jeb Patton Quartet: Whisper Not (Fresh Sound Records FSRCD 5134)
It’s absolutely clear where this quartet’s heart lies from one look at the material and...
Records offered for review to Jazz Journal in March-April 2025, including Goran Kajfeš, Matthew Kilner, Lagon Nwar, Germana La Sorsa, Ingrid Laubrock and Joe Lovano // Editor's pick: Lagon Nwar
Records offered for review to Jazz Journal in March-April 2025, including Phil Haynes, Arve Henriksen, Freddie Hubbard, Jon Irabagon and Naïssam Jalal // Editor's pick: Rita Hargrave and Wayne Wallace
This year's festival, blessed with sunshine, included Katia Melua, Lulu, Kokoroko, Lisa Stansfield, Billy Cobham, Daniel Casimir, Claire Martin, the Buena Vista All Stars, Neil Cowley, Macy Gray and Roger Daltrey
Records offered for review to Jazz Journal in March-April 2025, including Bill Frisell, Sakoto Fujii, Macy Gray and Trilok Gurtu // Editor's picks: Joanna Eden, EH3, Ronan Guilfoyle
Records offered for review to Jazz Journal in March-April 2025, including Cyrus Chestnut, Chick Corea, Larry Coryell, Carsten Dahl and Jacqui Dankworth // Editor's picks: Juan Carmona, Jonah David, Angelo Debarre
Records offered for review to Jazz Journal in March-April 2025, including Andy Shepherd, Norma Winstone, Hakan Başar, Brigitte Beraha, Alan Barnes, Art Blakey and Paul Bley
Sixty years ago Mark Gardner acclaimed the Swiss pianist's adaptation of the baroque to jazz, reckoning the era's hipsters would have flipped their wigs in approval
Sixty years ago Gerald Lascelles welcomed the swinging elements of Silver's new album while worrying slightly about his dalliance with unconventional tempi and forms
Fifty years ago Mike Shera thought Garbarek and Stenson's collection of pieces based on simple phrases or modes should be heard by those interested in that sort of thing
Sharel Cassity: Gratitude (Sunnyside Records)
As a youngster in Oklahoma, Sharel Cassity’s heart and soul got captured by bassist Christian McBride’s debut studio album Gettin’ To It (Verve Records, 1995). She later earned the chance to play with each of the three musicians from the rhythm section on that record. Now, the alto saxophonist reunites that groovy group for her sixth release as a leader.
Cassity...
Ben Webster: Soulville (WaxTime 772350-LP)
The swing-era trinity of Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young and Ben Webster really wrote the book on the tenor saxophone until John Coltrane and others came along. During the 30s Webster had worked with Andy Kirk, Fletcher Henderson and Benny Carter but it was probably his stay with Duke Ellington (1939-1943) that was most memorable. As he once said, “I got...
Records offered for review to Jazz Journal in March-April 2025, including Pete McGuiness Jazz Orchestra, Theo Travis, Bugge Wesseltoft, Becca Wilkins and Savina Yannatou // Editor's pick: The Action 4s
Records offered for review to Jazz Journal in March-April 2025, including Joshua Redman, Scandinavian Art Ensemble (w. Tomasz Stańko) and Martin Speake & Will Butterworth // Editor's pick: Steve Holt Jazz Impact Quintet
Records offered for review to Jazz Journal in March-April 2025, including Georgia Mancio & Alan Broadbent, Harvey Mason, Bennie Maupin, Pat Metheny and Hedvig Mollestad || Editor's pick: Mehldau, Turner, Bernstein
Just as Nigel Jarrett laments the dilution - even hijacking - of the word "jazz" by festivals featuring pop and increasingly resting on "inclusion" as a justification, Swanage in Dorset lays claim to hosting "'the largest and purest jazz...
For a third year Wandsworth - London Borough of Culture 2025 - presents Battersea Park in Concert over the summer bank-holiday weekend, this year 23-25 August. As in 2024, the Royal Philharmonic Concert Orchestra will again feature, but this...
James Baldwin (1924-1987) is considered by many to be one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century. Born into poverty in Harlem, New York, he became an activist and broke new ground with his exploration of racial...
In Brassroots Democracy, author Benjamin Barson presents a "music history from below", embracing the Haitian revolution, post-civil war reconstruction and early jazz. The term "brassroots democracy" is a synthesis of grassroots activism and New Orleans' historic brass-band tradition, and...
I first met Gale Madden at a record shop in Bellingham, Washington in the late 80s. As we stood digging a CD of vintage Roy Eldridge, Gale (1) regaled...
“I don’t rate myself,” asserts saxophonist Art Themen. “I’m just a jobbing musician who’s been very, very lucky.” It’s an astounding statement, for Themen,...
In 2024, having spluttered speechlessly at the non-jazz headline acts of major jazz festivals for several years, I came across Montreux and its 58th manifestation. Its promoters boasted it would “span all genres”. All genres of what? With a...
Roy Ayers was a virtuoso jazz vibraphone player and multi-instrumentalist, but he was also able, in the 1970s, to bring jazz substance into R&B, funk and soul and later to inspire the style known as neo-soul. Everyone Loves The...
Thirty years ago Mark Gilbert welcomed another example of the substitution of a loose sixties-style rock shuffle for the triplet groove most often associated with piano-trio jazz
Thirty years ago Derek Ansell reviewed the tenorist in a well-planned and expressive straightahead session with Tom Harrell, Willy Pickens, Cecil McBee and Elvin Jones
Thirty years ago Michael Tucker felt this unplugged set from Corea almost compensated for the 'high-tech, riff-heavy fusion which he has occasionally seen fit to indulge'
