In my last installment of guitar focused reviews, I covered solo recordings (seepart 1, part 2), here I expand the focus to duos. If I were being stringent, I’d also stick to straight guitar duos, but I did not feel like limiting it so much, therefore to get into this batch the requirements was at least one guitar and one something else. Part 2 of…
Today we pick up where we left off yesterday with an overview of recent solo guitar recordings. Readers of the blog may know that I have indulged in “Guitar Weeks” in past years, dedicating 5 days or more to guitar recordings, this time, however, my list grew unwieldly. I would need a guitar month to cover everything. So, I’m breaking it down into …
The pile of recordings to be reviewed grew ever taller. Over the course of the pandemic, as the months wore on, lockdowns come and went, case numbers rose and fell, the recordings, thankfully, kept coming, music kept being made. Some labels turned to digital only release series to keep the output going amid the unknown, some musicians raided their …
Where to start with a review of Leap of Faith? The group, the orchestra, the one man band, the duo, begins with woodwindist David Peck aka PEK and spirals forth from his home base in Boston. PEK identifies with fractals, as far as I know, it is the motif of all his many archival and more recent recordings. I think that it serves as a strong metapho…
In the waning days of the pre-pandemic world, reeds player and composer Ken Vandermark performed at the 3 Tage Jazz 2020 in Austria (a series connected with the renowned Saalfelden Jazz Festival). There, he played with Hungarian woodwindist István Grencsó with whom he released DO NOT SLAM THE DOOR! onBMC Records in 2019 (the album is a must liste…
By Stef GijsselsIn the fourteen years of our existence, we’ve reviewed only 15 trumpet-guitar albums. Obviously more albums have been released, but the format is clearly not very common. We’re updating you with three new albums.Tin/Bag – Evening Hawks (Big Ego, 2021) ****Of those 15 albums, three are by the duo of Kris Tiner and Mike Baggetta. We’r…
We took the occasion of Sammy Stein’s review of Ivo Perelman and Nate Wooley’s Polarity on the new Burning Ambulances record label to reach out to label founder Phil Freeman with some questions. Paul Acquaro: Burning Ambulance, the web site, contains a wealth of your writing
and podcasts about music. This seems like a good amount of wor…
Hey, does anyone have a Blu ray player I can use? This slim, attractive box set from saxophonist Ivo Perelman and pianist Matthew Shipp is, well, quite appealing. The orange texturedheavy stock paper box, closed by magnetic clasps, opens to reveal a CD, Blu ray disc, and a substantial booklet by writer and musician Jean-Michel Van Schouwburg. Whil…
I think it is easy to get a little intimidated by a new Nate Wooley recording. There is usually a concept that tries to answer a question about the process of creation and creativity that he presents eloquently and humbly, but as a listener you may be inclined to wonder, as I sometimes find myself doing, ‘will I get it?’ It’s easy to let this happ…
By Paul Acquaro Emerging during the depths of the Covid winter, the Dorf Alien Trio’s album, Industrial Memory, is the output from a trio of young players from Ahaus, Germany who seem to be, on the one hand, steeped in…
By Paul Acquaro New York based violinist Sana Nagano’s Smashing Humans begins with a no-nonsense musical statement. ‘Strings and Figures’ starts off with a few strokes of Nagano’s bow across the strings and then is joined by a lurching bass figure and…
I am delighted to see that I actually have an entry in Discogs! It’s nothing from my paltry recording output, but rather liner notes that I contributed to the Buenos Aires based SLD Trio’s (Paul Shocron, German Lamonega, and Pablo…
