Jazz in Elsewhere
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10 RARE FREE JAZZ ALBUMS I'M PROUD TO OWN (2017): Abstract arts from the past
30 Jun 2017 | 12 min read
Every month dozens of reissues across many genres – sometimes well annotated compilations, often reissued albums in replicas of the original artwork – appear. These days you can find obscure rural blues and Sixties psychedelic albums, the complete works of some folk singer who is barely a footnote in a reference book and much more without too much difficulty. But if there... > Read more
Julia Hulsmann Trio: Sooner And Later (ECM/Ode)
8 May 2017 | <1 min read
It has been almost a decade since German pianist Hulsmann’s trio impressed mightily with the emotionally still and evocative The End of A Summer, but also about six since we found her Imprint album mostly evaporated without leaving much of an impression. This new outing – only her sixth for the label since ’89 – finds her back in the trio format after other... > Read more
From Afar
KENNY BARRON INTERVIEWED (2017): Time makes a wine
10 Apr 2017 | 8 min read
Speaking from his home in rainy New York, 73-year old jazz pianist, composer and educator Kenny Barron sounds like he's possessed of the energy someone half his age. He is genial, quick, witty, looking forward to flying to Chicago the following day to play in an Oscar Peterson tribute . . . and clearly remembers his first paying gig. It was in his hometown of Philadelphia almost six... > Read more
Prayer, the Kenny Barron Trio, 2016
Colin Vallon, Patrice Moret, Julian Sartorius: Danse (ECM/Ode)
31 Mar 2017 | <1 min read
On the second album by this trio --- pianist Vallon and bassist Moret also having recorded in the quartet lead by singer Elina Duni, and together with drummer Samuel Rohrer – the intuitive understand between them is evident in the quiet explorations of melody. There are few fireworks here but rather an almost meditative sensibility is in play for many of the 11 pieces (nine... > Read more
Oort
Joey Alexander: Countdown (Motema/Ode)
23 Mar 2017 | 1 min read
Indonesian Alexander is a child prodigy who caught the jazz world's attention as an 11-year old. He seemed a natural and had been weaned on his father's jazz collection. He played for Herbie Hancock, and Wynton Marsalis saw him on You Tube and invited him to appear at the Lincoln Center's gala programme . . . and he's appeared at Newport and other credible jazz festivals. He's also... > Read more
Sunday Waltz
Benedikt Jahnel Trio: The Invariant (ECM/Ode)
6 Mar 2017 | 1 min read
One of the chief features of artists on the ECM roster is how they move about, hooking up with like minds for an album or maybe two, the chairs being shuffled to allow artists to refresh and renew themselves in the company of others. In that regard the Benedikt Jahnel Trio is almost an oddity. This year they – Berlin-based pianist Jahnel, Canadian drummer Owen Howard and Spanish... > Read more
Further Consequences
SABU TOYOZUMI PROFILED (2017): Zen and the art of freedom
6 Mar 2017 | 3 min read
Any number of guitarists would say they were inspired by Jimi Hendrix, but rather fewer drummers. Least of all a Japanese guy in a pop band with the archetypal name of the Samurais. But drummer Yoshisaburo Toyozumi – known as Sabu and who went on to become one of the most respected free jazz drummers – has always pointed to the chance encounter of seeing Hendrix play in... > Read more
Auckland Jazz Orchestra: Bloom (SDL)
3 Mar 2017 | 1 min read
For many decades, many New Zealand jazz musicians have done what the league players call “the hard yards” . . . jazz players were in high school bands (Grammaphone), navy bands, Rodger Fox's invaluable training ground and flexible working ensembles (Tom Ludvigson's Inner City Jazz Workshop). These rarely-acknowledged training grounds – often hard sprints under the... > Read more
Bloom
Theo Bleckmann: Elegy (ECM/Ode)
1 Mar 2017 | 1 min read
Every now and again we allow ourselves to say, “an acquired taste” . . . But usually that means something totally difficult and out there on the perimeter . . . like Yoko Ono and Pere Ubu used to be. But, to these ears, this album by singer/poet Bleckmann and a very decent jazz quarter is what a university music department might call “Art Music”. Which... > Read more
Comedy Tonight
Craig Taborn: Daylight Ghosts (ECM/Ode)
20 Feb 2017 | 1 min read | 1
Late on this album by the American pianist Craig Taborn and his quartet, they deliver a thoughtful version of Jamaican Farewell, not the song made famous by Harry Belafonte – that is Jamaica Farewell – but the wistful tune by Roscoe Mitchell which appeared on his '99 album Nine to Get Ready, also on the ECM label. It's a fine tribute to Mitchell and follows two albums... > Read more
Jamaican Farewell
Jasmine Lovell-Smith's Towering Poppies: Yellow Red Blue (Paint Box)
20 Feb 2017 | 1 min read
It has been almost five years since we last heard from this New Zealand saxophonist who moved to Connecticut (where studied with the great Anthony Braxton and appeared in one of his ensembles), then to New York and later Mexico. She has now come back to further her studies Wellington where she is starting a doctorate under John Psathas. This album, recorded with her American group... > Read more
Moving Mountains
RALPH TOWNER and JOHN ABERCROMBIE (2017): Staying true in the old style
6 Feb 2017 | 3 min read
The jazz imprint of the European label ECM has a reputation for acclaimed saxophonists (Jan Garbarek, Charles Lloyd, John Surman, Joe Lovano, Steve Kuhn etc) and pianists (Keith Jarrett, Paul Bley, more recently Vijay Iyer, Marilyn Crispell and Marcin Wasilewski). But it has also kept a roster of remarkable guitarists. Some of these players were out on the edge like David Torn... > Read more
Joy, by the John Abercrombie Quartet
John Key Trio: Back and Forth (Odd)
2 Dec 2016 | 1 min read
Because there is so little money to be made out of releasing a local jazz album, you are surprised to find anyone bothering at all. And that may explain the nine year gap between this by Auckland pianist John Key and his previous release Whole (under the band name Strange Fruit). That's a pity because here Key delivers a very good, straight-ahead piano trio album of all originals with... > Read more
Slow Right Down
MORE CAPITAL iiiiDEAS (2016): Live and direct from Aotearoa
11 Aug 2016 | 3 min read
Although jazz can give the impression of being a one-take music (the performer simultaneously the composer and improvising on the spot), it's often much more considered than that. Witness the number of takes Charlie Parker did for the Savoy label. However, for many purists, jazz is at its best on the bandstand. That is the moment when everyone is on the tightrope and the risks are... > Read more
The Scream, from Dreamville/Jazzmares
Crayford/Street/Weiss: East West Moon (Rattle Jazz)
7 Aug 2016 | <1 min read
Jonathan Crayford has long been considered one of New Zealand's finest jazz pianists and his range is wide, from Latin flavours to touring with Trinity Roots, playing acid-jazz with New York's Groove Collective, jazz-rock (albeit on acoustic piano) and this album which frequently has a profoundly classical weight and gravitas in many of the pieces. Joined by bassist Ben Street and... > Read more
Moon
Various Artists: The Rough Guide to Ethiopian Jazz (Rough Guide/Southbound)
18 Jul 2016 | <1 min read
This is certainly jazz from elsewhere. As with so many countries in the colonial period and into the early days of independence (before local bullies hijacked the government or invaders from outside did the same), Ethiopia once had a flourish and distinctive jazz scene. Duke Ellington on one of his music-cum-diplomatic missions for the US State Department played in Addis Abba in... > Read more
Heywete by Tesfa Maryam Kidane
Various Artists: Abrazo; The Havana Sessions (Ansonica)
20 Jun 2016 | 2 min read
It is hard to believe but for more than half a century the tiny island nation of Cuba endured a cultural and trade embargo by the United States, largely based on two issues: they are a Communist regime and the notorious missile crisis of the early Sixties. In recent years under the Obama government there has been a thawing in relations, but of course musicians got there first . . .... > Read more
Bugs and Gas
Pat Metheny/Cuong Vu Trio: Cuong Vu Trio Meets Pat Metheny (Nonesuch)
6 Jun 2016 | 1 min read
The 46-year old Vietnam-born trumpeter Vu established himelf in the NYC Downtown scene in the Nineties, has recorded for the edgy Knitting Factory label and played with Laurie Anderson, drummer Gerry Hemmingway, Cibo Matto and appeared on the unreleased 2001 David Bowie single Your Turn to Drive (aka Toy, the title track of the 2011 Bowie album and also on the recent Nothing Has Changed... > Read more
Telescope
Chris Mason-Battley Group/John Psathas; Dialogos (Rattle Jazz)
22 Feb 2016 | 2 min read
In 2000, Auckland composer/saxophonist Chris Mason-Battley did something so rare In New Zealand jazz as to be almost unique: for the album Karakia he incorporated and interpreted elements of Maori waiata/song into his music. You would think such local influences would be common enough in jazz, but even today they are seldom explored. That album -- probably hard to find these days -- was... > Read more
Calenture Pt 2
KAMASI WASHINGTON INTERVIEWED (2016): Thinking beyond The Epic
9 Feb 2016 | 6 min read
Those music writers who heard it almost invariably put Kamasi Washington's album in their “best of the year” list for 2015, as we did. And there was a lot of the album – appropriately titled The Epic – to hear. An all-encompassing jazz concept spread over three discs and 172 minutes, The Epic embraced most aspects of jazz history – big band to... > Read more