Jazz in Elsewhere
Subscribe to my newsletter for weekly updates.
Paul Van Ross: The Buck Stops Here (IA/Rattle)
10 Mar 2013 | 1 min read | 1
Tenor and soprano saxophonist Paul Van Ross recorded these eight originals with a quintet at a Melbourne jazz club (before an inaudible audience, if there was one) in just one day in April 2011. That's a measure of how confident the players are, and presumably how familiar with the often bouncy and slightly quirky material they were. Van Ross writes tunes in what we might call a... > Read more
Someone Somewhere Sometime
PHAROAH SANDERS; IN THE BEGINNING (2013): The call of the free
8 Mar 2013 | 4 min read
The two times I saw the great Pharoah Sanders he could not have played more differently: the gig in a New York club had him as the edgy post-bop player in front of small, serious audience; the performance in New Orleans as a populist Afro-funk soul-inspired jazzman who had people up and moving. I interviewed him in 2004 in advance of an Auckland concert (which I didn't see because I... > Read more
Cocktail Piece (take 2)
HUGH MASEKELA INTERVIEWED (2013): Out of Africa
18 Feb 2013 | 4 min read
With a husky chuckle Hugh Masekela recalls himself as a curious child, some 70 years ago, who would wake, wind up the gramophone and sing along with every song. “I was obsessed by music. I thought there were people living in the speaker of the Victrola and that's where I wanted to live. And that's where I've been living ever since.” South African-born Masekela –... > Read more
MEREDITH MONK PROFILED (2013): Art for art's sake
4 Feb 2013 | 2 min read
New Yorker Meredith Monk (born 1942) has created a world of her own between the vocal art-music of Laurie Anderson, contemporary dance and cutting edge film, avant-theatre and that place Bjork ended up on her 2004 album Medulla which was almost entirely a cappella vocalising. Monk wrote a fascinating opera for voice and a few instruments (Atlas in ‘92) and almost imposed herself on... > Read more
Chinook
Crayford, Sellers, Dyne: Our Own Sweet Way (ia/Rattle)
30 Jan 2013 | 1 min read
Released through the Independent Artists imprint of Auckland's Rattle label -- albums which don't quite fit the remit of Rattle Jazz but are deserving of wider distribution -- comes this collection of tunes by the likes of Thelonious Monk (Eronel, Bemsha Swing), the late Dave Brubeck (the title track), Wayne Shorter (Fall), Horace Silver (Nica's Dream), Dizzy Gillespie (Woody'n'You) and... > Read more
Things Ain't What They Used To Be
Stephan Micus: Panagia (ECM/Ode)
29 Jan 2013 | <1 min read
In a previous profile of the German-born musician Stephan Micus (here), I noted that his musical journey has run parallel to a deeply spiritual one and this album -- his 20th for ECM, settings of six Byzantine Greek prayers alongside quietly moving instrumentals -- would seem the culmination of a particular voyage. As always the multi-instrumentalist and singer reaches beyond perhaps the... > Read more
You Are a Shining Spring
DAVE LISIK INTERVIEWED (2012): The mothership takes flight
21 Jan 2013 | 2 min read
Canadian-born and US-educated Dave Lisik is one of the more innovative composers at work in New Zealand today. And also highly prolific. A scan back through Elsewhere's files shows him working with electronic-meets-jazz for Colin Hemmingsen's Fate and the Processor, a not dissimilar approach using taonga puoro (traditonal Maori instruments) played by Richard Nunns on Ancient Astronaut... > Read more
Ebony and Moonlight
Tania Giannouli, Paulo Chagas: Forest Stories (Rattle)
21 Jan 2013 | 1 min read
Although not on the Rattle Jazz imprint, these eight diverse, melodic and mood shifting pieces are pure improvisations for piano (Giannouli) and saxes/flutes/clarinets (Chagas) and evoke something of the timelessness, emotional space and natural power of the forests of the title. Without much difficulty -- and let's be honest, pure improvisation along these lines can be hard going for most... > Read more
This Beautiful Hard Way
PALLE MIKKELBORG PROFILED (2013): Another man with a horn
7 Jan 2013 | 1 min read
The curious thing about the career of Denmark's acclaimed jazz trumpeter Palle Mikkelborg is that after 25-years as a professional -- and at the top of his game -- he came to wide international attention only in '84 with a suite which was performed by another trumpeter. That music, which subsequently appeared on the album Aura in '89, was played by and written in honour of Miles Davis... > Read more
White (by Palle Mikkelborg)
STEPHAN MICUS PROFILED (2013): Music of the spheres and beyond
1 Jan 2013 | 1 min read
Take a deep breath because here’s a partial list of the instruments German multi-tasker Stephan Micus has played on recent albums: Bavarian zither, tin whistle, sattar, steel guitar, Japanese flute (shakuhachi), tuned flowerpots, Egyptian flute (nay), steel drums, Indian sarangi, dulcimer -- and lots I can’t even pretend to know about like bolombatto, sinding, dilruba, doussn’... > Read more
Nik Bartsch's Ronin: Live (ECM/Ode)
1 Jan 2013 | <1 min read
A previous album by this often melodically minimalist, rhythmically propulsive and effervescent group around keyboard player Bartsch -- Llyria -- was singled out as one the Best of Elsewhere in 2010 and this double live disc recorded at various venues between 2009 - 2011 confirms that they are something special. And different. Young, vigorous and playing with a constraint which sometimes... > Read more
Modul 17 Tokyo
DAVE BRUBECK (1920-2012): Standing the test of Time
7 Dec 2012 | 4 min read
Time. It marched on. Dave Brubeck lived to a fine old age in jazz where unemployment, insolvency and lifestyle usually takes its toll much earlier. In his obituaries Brubeck could reasonably expect tributes for popularising jazz with American college students in the Fifties, appearing on the cover to Time magazine in 1954, releasing one of the most durable and popular jazz albums of all time... > Read more
The Harvest: Page/Brown/Psathas (Rattle Jazz)
26 Nov 2012 | 1 min read | 1
This two-part album -- The Harvest Suite in eight sections, Like Picking Fruit in nine -- features Adelaide-based expat Kiwi saxophonist Adam Page, guitarist James Brown and producer John Psathas on pieces where the raw sounds of sax and guitar are looped and electronic effects employed to create textural swathes and moments -- as on The Couple's Prelude on The Harvest Suite -- which come off... > Read more
Condense
Jarrett, Garbarek, Danielsson, Christensen: Sleeper (ECM/Ode)
4 Oct 2012 | 1 min read
By my exceptionally crude count, pianist Keith Jarrett's name (as leader of a group or solo) is on at least 65 albums -- and some, indeed many, of those are double albums, triple sets or large boxes. I guess saxophonist Jan Garbarek wouldn't be too far behind (although he generally limits hmself to single discs) and bassist Palle Danielsson and drummer Jon Christensen are no slouches when... > Read more
New Dance
Jasmine Lovell-Smith's Towering Poppies: Fortune Songs (Paint Box)
26 Sep 2012 | 1 min read
Lovell-Smith is an expat New Zealander currently living in New York after having completed her music degree at the School of Music in Wellington. After nine years in the capital -- playing alongside Norman Meehan, Paul Dyne, Reuben Bradley and others -- she upped stakes for the tougher climate on the Big Apple. On the evidence of this modest, often cautious but always melodic outing with... > Read more
Lover's Knot
Marc Johnson, Elaine Elias: Swept Away (ECM/Ode)
23 Sep 2012 | 1 min read
Longtime followers of the ECM label will register that this one ticks any number of the right boxes: the line-up of pianist Elaine Elias, bassist Marc Johnson, drummer Joey Baron (a working trio in their own right) and tenor player Joe Lovano is one of those modest "supergroup" aggregations of talent which the label does so effortlesly. This is unashamedly lyrical, melodic music... > Read more
B is for Butterfly
Enrico Rava: On the Dance Floor (ECM/Ode)
24 Aug 2012 | 1 min read
Of all the tributes to Michael Jackson, this -- by the great jazz trumpeter Rava -- would seem the most unexpected. If Miles Davis were still alive we might not have been surprised by such an exploration of Jackson's tunes, but European Rava admits he only ever had passing acquaintance with Jackson's music. It wasn't until a few days after the singer-writer's death that he came home from a... > Read more
Little Susie
Kim Paterson: The Duende (Sarang Bang Records)
1 Aug 2012 | 1 min read | 2
Auckland trumpeter Kim Paterson has been around for perhaps as long as most jazz listeners can recall but has been poorly represented on albums under his own name. In fact I'm scratching to think of even one . . . although he was on albums by such important groups as Dr Tree, Space Case and Jazzmobile of which he was a key member, and more recently has appeared alongside Gianmarco Liguori and... > Read more
Catharsis
Steve Kuhn Trio: Wisteria (ECM/Ode)
16 Jul 2012 | 1 min read
Elegance in piano playing is usually the description reserved for the exclusive use of reviewers about Bill Evans, but here Steve Kuhn makes a strong claim on thoughtful pieces such as the title track, Romance and the lovely Pastorale where (I am guessing, my CD came with no cover) bassist Steve Swallow plays a soft and enticing guitar-like melody. In fact, if it weren't for Joey Baron's... > Read more
Pastorale
John Surman: Saltash Bells (ECM/Ode)
29 Jun 2012 | <1 min read | 1
Sort of radio-without-pictures here from multi-instrumentalist John Surman who was scheduled to work with a photographer/filmmaker to document the area in Devon where he grew up. When that project didn't pan out Surman just continued to explore the idea though his music in pieces which reference specific places (Dartmoor, Plymouth Sound etc). With synthesiser frequently providing the... > Read more