Month: November 2024

Micah Thomas: Mountains

Pianist Micah Thomas is caught recorded at a gig at NYC’s Jazz Gallery back in June, 2023 with a team of Nicole Grover/ts, Adam O’Farrill/tp, Kanoa Mendenhall/b, Caleb Smith/tb, Kweku Sumbry/dr and Immanuel Wilkins/as. The tunes flow together as in…

Dharma Down: Owl Dreams

The quartet of Duncan Hardy/as-qanun, Mike Effenberger/p, Scott Kiefner/b and John Mettam/dr bring together an album of mostly originals of various moods. Hardy’s traditional string instrument, the zanun, creates an exotic drone on “Jalla Man” and a meditative mood for…

King Llama: Fata Implexis

Modern plugged in fusion sounds ar delivered by the core team of Ryan T. Bailey/g-prog, Luis Briones/dr, Antony Crawford/b and Billy Paulsen/g along with a bus load of guests on an album inspired by the likes of Yes and RTF.…

Michael Pallas: Gateway

Trombonist Michael Pallas teams up with Lomar Brown/as, Yeisson Villamar/p, John Benitez/b, Jonathan Barber/dr and Nelson Matthew Gonzalez/pec for a collection of originals. There’s a nice Latin percolation to the dancing “ Life On Mars” and the soulful “Streaming Hope”…

The Hot Club of San Francisco: Original Gadjo

The team of Paul Mehling/g-banj-voc, Evan Price/vi, Dexter Williams/b-tb, Jordan Samuels-Nelson/g, Cullen Luper/v and Hunter Mathews/g deliver original compositions inspired by Django Reinhardt’s Hot Club with Stephane Grappelli. The swinging is easy on  pieces like “Systeme D” and the waltzing…

POPPISH VOCALS…Janis Siegel & Yaron Gershovsky: The Colors Of My Life, Allyson Briggs: Promises, Prayers and Raindrops, Jeff Harnar: The Second Time Around

Jazz voices for the mainstream… Manhattan Transfer vocalist Janis Siegel joins with pianist Yaron Gershovsky and guests including Boris Kozlov-David Finck/b, Cliff Almond/dr and some cameo vocalists and strings for an album of Cy Coleman compositions.  A bit of the…