Jazz in Elsewhere
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Jonathan Crayford/Ben Street/Dan Weiss: Dark Light (Rattle Jazz)
6 Jul 2014 | 1 min read | 1
Since Auckland's Rattle label signed a deal with Wellington's Victoria University Press (VUP) it has become alarmingly productive. Albums -- especially those on the Rattle Jazz imprint -- are starting to appear at what seems like one or more a month. But that's not a complaint because the label's standards are impeccably high, and this piano trio album lead by the multi-faceted Jonathan... > Read more
Galois' Candle
ATLANTIC JAZZ LEGENDS IN A BOX (2014): Cheap steps into giant jazz
23 Jun 2014 | 4 min read
In a recent informal conversation with an American singer, the topic turned to the old debate: vinyl, CDs or mp3s? She said, of course she preferred vinyl . . . but I sensed a hesitation in her voice and said as much. She laughed and then admitted . . . actually, she preferred CDs but you weren't supposed to say that because everyone talks about the superiority of vinyl. But, she... > Read more
Backlash
MARK DE CLIVE-LOWE INTERVIEWED (2014): Following his own beat'n'path
2 Jun 2014 | 14 min read
The day we speak to Mark De Clive-Lowe – expat keyboard layer, multi-instrumentalist, producer and remixer – it's in a Grey Lynn cafe and he is on a flying visit home. It's a Friday morning and he arrived just 24 hours previous from Japan where he'd played two shows, within eight hours he's going to back on a plane heading home to Los Angeles where he has lived for the past... > Read more
Brukstep
JOSHUA REDMAN INTERVIEWED (2014): Beatles, Bach and beyond
2 Jun 2014 | 3 min read
Joshua Redman – born in 1969 and the pre-eminent jazz saxophonist of his generation – sounds slightly embarrassed when it's suggested, given his age, he maybe had Kiss posters on his bedroom wall when he was at school? “Actually, I never got into Kiss,” he laughs. “It was Prince or Michael Jackson. The Police was a big band for me, and early hip-hop like... > Read more
Billy Hart Quartet: One is the Other (ECM/Ode)
19 May 2014 | <1 min read
Although drummer Bily Hart seems to have been around since jazz was a young man -- he's now 73 and played in soul bands behind Otis Redding and others before seriously embarking on the jazz route -- this is only his second album for ECM after the rather patchy All Our Reasons in 2011. But despite being on hand in the past for some muscular Miles Davis funk (On the Corner), as well as... > Read more
Some Enchanted Evening
Tord Gustavsen Quartet: Extended Circle (ECM/Ode)
5 May 2014 | 1 min read
Norwegian pianist Gustavsen has made sometime entries at Elsewhere previously, his most notable being the exceptional Being There trio album (with bassist Harald Johnsen, drummer Jarle Vespestad) which was one of our Best of Elsewhere 2007 albums. But where that album was about quietude, this one with his quartet (now with bassist Mats Eilertsen plus saxophonist Tore Brunborg)... > Read more
The Prodigal Song
Vijay Iyer: Mutations (ECM/Ode)
29 Apr 2014 | 1 min read
Pianist Vijay Iyer is not one to undersell himself and is certainly a genuinely intellectual guy but, as Elsewhere noted previously, you shouldn't let that come between you and his music. The border between jazz and classical music has often been fairly porous, especially at the ECM label, and that's the region Iyer occupies with this collection of pieces, 10 of which are written for... > Read more
Mutations VII: Kernel
PETER BROTZMANN INTERVIEWED (2014): Freedom isn't frightening
22 Apr 2014 | 3 min read | 1
German saxophonist Peter Brotzmann – on a short solo tour early next month – recalls the only other time he was here. In the Eighties he and bassist Peter Kowald offered their muscular, free-form jazz improvisation at a time when “there was no audience for this music in New Zealand”. “I remember playing Christchurch and after the concert – and it was... > Read more
Noise Like Wings
JOHN COLTRANE; BLUE TRAIN RECONSIDERED (2014): High-end hard bop, and popular
21 Apr 2014 | 3 min read
Although most of saxophonist John Coltrane's career was on Prestige and especially Impulse!, in September 1957 -- making good on a handshake promise the previous year -- he was loaned by Prestige to the Blue Note label. This was a practice which writer William Ruhlmann noted in his '95 Goldmine article on Coltrane's career, "a no more unusual matter in the small jazz world than the... > Read more
Lazy Bird
THE BLUE NOTE LABEL AT 75 (2014): Vision, visuals and visionaries in jazz
18 Apr 2014 | 3 min read | 1
In early January 1939 Alfred Lion – a 30-year old emigre from Berlin who had moved permanently to New York just two years previous – took the boogie-woogie pianists Meade Lux Lewis and Albert Ammons into a Manhattan recording studio he'd hired for the day. He could not have guessed that he was about to shape the future of jazz. Lion had little idea of how to... > Read more
Boy, What a Night (1963)
The Jac: Nerve (Rattle Jazz)
17 Apr 2014 | 1 min read | 1
Although the idea of band growing out of a rehearsal outfit for staff and students at a music college doesn't exactly make the heart leap with anticipation, The Jac here are something quite different from your standard big band finding themselves on The Fake Book. A mid-sized ensemble -- an octet which means it can cut down to spacious arrangements or spark up the whole for a bit of a blast... > Read more
Marik
Takuya Kuroda: Rising Son (Blue Note/Universal)
14 Apr 2014 | 1 min read
This hot'n'cool young trumpeter -- originally from Kobe, Japan but latterly of Berklee then the New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music in Manhattan -- came to attention when he appeared on albums by vocalist Jose James on the urban Brownswood label. James, also now signed to Blue Note, produces this label debut for Kuroda and as on previous outings the trumpeter and producer walk the... > Read more
Sometime Somewhere Somehow
GREGORY PORTER INTERVIEWED (2014): Grammy jazz gentle giant
7 Apr 2014 | 7 min read
Gregory Porter is a big man with a soft voice. The former linebacker from San Diego slipped sideways into music with the assistance of a mentor Kamau Kenyatta, got a part on Broadway in the cast of It Ain't Nothin' But the Blues and recorded two albums for small labels which were both nominated for jazz Grammys. Then in January this year he finally got the award when his debut album... > Read more
Liquid Spirit
Various Artists: The Best of Blue Note (Blue Note/Universal)
31 Mar 2014 | 1 min read
As mentioned previously, the Blue Note jazz label is currently celebrating its 75th anniversary with large reissue programme of remastered classic albums on vinyl (100 over the coming 15 months or so) and also looking to raise the profile of its artists both old and new. This double disc brings old and new together across 22 tracks (see full listing below) in a chronological collection whch... > Read more
Afro Blue
10 CLASSIC BLUE NOTE COVERS (2014): Making the music look good
24 Mar 2014 | 5 min read
As you read this, the Blue Note record label is celebrating it's 75th anniversary. The label synonymous with classic jazz -- which went some way to defining the way people understood jazz in the Fifties and Sixties -- has been going since 1939 when its founder Alfred Lion recorded pianists Albert Ammons and Meade Lux Lewis in a New York studio. At the end of that year Lion was joined by his... > Read more
Right Now
Jonas Kullhammar Quartet: Lat Det Vara (moserobie.com)
10 Mar 2014 | 1 min read
I cannot tell a lie, I bought this for the cover when I spotted it in a record store in the old town of Stockholm . . . but am delighted I did. At the time I didn't even know it was a jazz album, let alone one by a guy who has won a stack of awards in Sweden and been nominated for Swedish Grammys. I had not previously heard of tenor player Jonas Kullhammar or his quartet however... > Read more
Julaftonsfan (extract only)
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Phil Davison: Straight, Bent and Uncut (iTunes)
31 Jan 2014 | 1 min read
When Adolphe Sax invented the instruments in the mid 19th century which bear his name, he could hardly have predicted just what musical diversity this family of horns would encompass. As an orchestral instrument it moved into dance bands, swing, allowed for the beautifully melodic tones of Lester Young, the furious experimentalism of Charlie Parker and the spiritual searching of John... > Read more
Brazil Nuts
MURRAY McNABB INTERVIEWED (1947-2013): The new man with the courage to make himself new
17 Nov 2013 | 9 min read
The plan would have been timely: a concert acknowledging the half century he’d known and played in bands with drummer Frank Gibson. But then everything changed. “They gave me a year, that was a year ago,” said 66-year-old keyboard player and composer McNabb about the cancer diagnosis he received. “So I’m going downhill gradually, losing weight. It’s... > Read more
Nick Granville Group: Refractions (Rattle Jazz)
14 Nov 2013 | 1 min read
Some months ago New Zealand guitarist Nick Granville answered our Famous Elsewhere Jazz Questionnaire on the strength of what was then his forthcoming album Refractions. Well, that album has now arrived so we direct you back to his answers here because it also gives you a potted biography of his creativity and past work, which means we don't have to do it again now. At that time... > Read more
Ornette-Ology
The Swallow Quintet: Into the Woodwork (ECM/Ode)
25 Sep 2013 | <1 min read
On paper, all the ingredients are in place here where the seniors - - the wonderful bassist Steve Swallow and extraordinary composer Carla Bley -- are united with the new generation: guitarist Steve Gardenas, tenor player Chris Cheek and drummer Jorge Rossy. But here Bley -- who plays organ rather than piano -- is almost inconsequential. So -- while this is the respectful career... > Read more