Category: Recordings
Dálava is an ambitious – and it seems – very personal project by husband and wife team guitarist Aram Bajakian and vocalist Julia Ulehla. It’s a song cycle set to fragments and stanzas of poetry and verse recorded by Ulehla’s great-grandfather Vladimir Úlehla in eastern Europe at the start of the 20th century. While the poems are set to music…
The Winter Jazz Festival hit NYC last weekend. It was a crazy scene – sold out shows, SRO venues – but there was a lot of great music. One show that really stood out was Nate Wooley and Ken Vandermark’s duo set. Their concept was modeled after the combo of trumpeter Bobby Bradford and saxophonist and clarinetist John Carter, who were based out …
Ah, memories … I recall downloading Lawnmower’s first album, West, from eMusic at Stef’s enthusiastic recommendation. Then, I remember falling for it, becoming enthralled by the two guitars spinning ambient textures, Luthar Grey’s understated drums and Jim Hobb’s earthy saxophone. I also had the luck to catch a performance at the a sweltering…
Saxophonist John Dikeman is the lungs behind the high powered Amsterdam based group Cactus Truck. Originally from Wyoming, he traversed the country, stopped by Chicago and NYC, studied in Michigan and Vermont, lived and performed in Egypt, traveled through Europe and now has settled in recent years in Holland. If you know Cactus Truck, you may…
Side A’sIn the Abstractis the follow up to 2012’s wonderfulIn The Margins.The interaction between Ken Vandermark’s reed work, Håvard Wilk’s sympathetic piano playing, and Chad Taylor’s impeccable drumming pushes the somewhat traditional, but wholly original, trio into exciting and new musical territories.
The opening track, ‘Cadeau (for Man…
Two LPs and a 7″ – if you cannot get enough of the duo of reed player Ken Vandermark and drummer Paal Nilssen-Love on this album, you’re insatiable – and that’s just what we want. In fact, if we weren’t just a little … umm … obsessed with the thrill that we get from music that skirts the edges, from the tightrope of free improv to the more …
One may think, from titles of the tracks on saxophonist Matt Nelson’s solo recording Lower Bottomsthat he’s a bit a jaded …. ‘Sunk Cost’, ‘Sworn Enemies’, ‘Motor Mouth’ and ‘To Believe in What’ all seem a bit, well, down. However, good to know that Nelson seems to be a master of subterfuge – not only are the tracks teeming with lifeblood but …
Wayne Horvitz and The Royal Room Collective Music Ensemble – At the Reception (Songlines, 2014) ****½
On his Royal Room Collective Music Ensemble recording “At the Reception” – keyboardist, composer and conductor Wayne Horvitz leads a big band through a set of his compositions that involve a great deal of improvisation and are highly en…
Cagematchis a sax, guitar and drum out of the Washington, DC area. On soprano and alto sax is Kate Olson, a member of recent blog favorite Syrinx Effect.Joining Olson here is guitarist Gary Prince and drummer Tim Cohen. The sum of their efforts is captivating mix of hypnotic melody and atmosphere that unfolds expertly over the course of ‘Missin…
ByPaul Acquaro
Schrödingers Cat is named after the famous quantum physics thought experiment that allowed for a cat to be both alive and dead at the same time. In the case of this trio, the cat’s alive, and it is moving quite beautifully inside the box.
Paulo Brusò uses his guitar to develop lovely textures for Riccardo Marogna’s bass…
Here on the FJB, we often cite free jazz pioneer clarinetist JimmyGiuffrefor his album “Free Fall”,but a couple of years before his trio with guitarist Jim Hall spawned the hit “The Train and the River”, which Giuffre described as “blues-based folk jazz”…
Bill Frisell – Guitar in the Space Age (Okeh, 2014) ****½
ByMartin Schray
Bill Fri…
Day three of guitar week – we’re into trios now and there seems to be quite a lot of them!
Jakob Thorkild Trio – Art Sleaze (Tyrfing, 2014) ****
By Chris Haines
This power trio has the attitude of punk, the sounds of heavy rock and the exploration of freely improvised music. At times the sound is slightly reminiscent of another Scandi…
