Anat Cohen is one of my absolute favorite clarinet players, as well as being in the top 10 tenors around. Most of her releases are filled with exciting moments of swing with a mixture of rhythms from various parts of…
Category: Reviews
Mauricio Pessoa: Habitat
Here’s a gentle and unassuming release of Brazilian music by guitarist/vocalist Mauricio Pessoa. His soto voice is delicate and warm as he sings with a simpatico band that ranges from just a piano and bass (“Prisma”) to larger ensembles that…
Diana Krall: Glad Rag Doll
You’ve really got to admire Diana Krall. She could easily rest on her laurels and spend the rest of her life filling theatres and selling discs doing standards. Instead, she takes artistic changes like her album of originals a few…
SWR Big Band/Dresden Philharmonic: Live Rhapsody in Swing: Ellington/Gershwin/Nestico
My uncle George used to tell me when I was a kid that there would come a day when jazz would become like classical music: musicians doing formal interpretations of what once was improvisation. Is that a good or bad…
Staff Benda Bilili: Bouger le Monde
If you don’t know the story, this African band is comprised of street musicians from Kinshasa, Zaire (now called the Democratic Republic of the Congo) who have been disabled with various forms of paraplegia. Inspiring as that is, and it’s…
Preservation Jazz Hall Band: St. Peter & 57th St
There’s a bumper sticker that mocks Republicans with the question “What are Conservatives trying to conserve?” . Well, you could ask the same question here, and it kind of answers the sticker as well. What the PHJB is trying to…
Chris Hillman & The Desert Rose Band@Scherr Theatre 11.03.12
At a packed theatre for a fund raiser to build the Greek Orthodox church that he’s a member of, Rock Hall of Famer Chris Hillman brought his acoustically adroit Desert Rose Band to Thousand Oaks and presented music ranging from…
****RINGER OF THE WEEK****Brubeck Brothers Quartet: Lifetimes
Maybe there IS something to genetic engineering. Dan/dr and Chris/b-btb Brubeck, sons of the famed Dave, have been releasing some wonderfully original and exciting music lately. This latest one, with Mike DeMicco/g and Chuck Lamb/p along side the family, does some…
ESSENTIAL MUSIC FROM AVID JAZZ: Gene Krupa: Five Classic Albums Plus, Flip Phillips: Four Classic Albums Plus, Bud Shank: Four Classic Albums
Oh! So this is what a saxophone is supposed to sound like! UK-based Avid Jazz is putting both Mosaic Records and Sony Legacy to SHAME. They put out first rate reissues much more often than the former, and their pricing…
Pat Metheny: The Orchestron Project
If you’re a Pat Metheny fan, you are going to go CRAZY over this double dvd set that documents Pat Metheny’s fantastic sonic experimentation with his self made gigantic music machine, the Orchestron. If you’ve only experienced Metheny’s fantastic album…