Jazz in Elsewhere
Subscribe to my newsletter for weekly updates.
Paul Dunmall New Quartet: World Without (577 Records/digital outlets)
19 Aug 2023 | <1 min read
The astonishingly prolific British jazz and free improv saxophonist Paul Dunmall has released something like 100 albums under his own name with the likes of Marcus Stockhausen, Keith Tippett, Andrew Cyrille and others, and has been a sideman to Johnny Guitar Watson, Roswell Rudd, Richard Thompson and many more. He now turns up on the uncompromising 577 Records out of New York with guitarist... > Read more
World Without (edit)
COLTRANE AND DOLPHY, DISCOVERED (2023): Pushing at the Gate
7 Aug 2023 | 2 min read | 1
When Thelonious Monk said “freedom and jazz go hand in hand” he was making a political observation, but also telling us something about the nature of jazz creativity. Jazz allows its creators a freedom unavailable in most other musical idioms. But, as with Abstract Expressionism, the far reaches of jazz creativity can leave the audience behind. Those who want... > Read more
Impressions
JAZZ AS IT'S MEANT TO BE: (2023): Come and see the real thing . . .
28 Jun 2023 | 3 min read
Earlier this year under the heading The Jazz Conundrum, Elsewhere considered just how difficult jazz was to promote. Proper jazz, the improvised stuff. We noted many so-called jazz festivals – like the Waiheke Jazz Festival this year – are padded out with artists firmly in the pop and rock category and not even close to something we know as jazz, which we loosely defined as... > Read more
Tania Giannouli: Solo (Rattle/digital outlets)
12 Jun 2023 | 1 min read
Greek pianist/composer Tania Giannouli has had a long association with Auckland's Rattle label, this being her fifth release through them. She has recorded with taonga puoro artist Rob Thorne and Rattle's Steve Garden on Rewa in 2018, with her own ensemble, and her trio album In Fading Light (piano, trumpet and oud, no rhythm section) was one of our Best of 2020 albums. As far back a... > Read more
The Circling Sun: Spirits (Soundways/digital outlets)
4 Jun 2023 | 1 min read
The drummer/producer Julien Dyne and saxophonist Cameron Allen have appeared a number of times at Elsewhere in different contexts, from Avantdale Bowling Club and free jazz to emotionally yearning material. Here they are part of the illustrious Auckland collective The Circling Sun which takes spiritual flight through Latin influences, the Coltranes John and Alice, a touch of Sun Ra, the... > Read more
Spirits, Part 2
Richard X Bennett, Matt Parker: Parker Plays X (BYNK/digital outlets)
29 May 2023 | 1 min read
When Brooklyn-based composer and keyboard player Richard X Bennett contacted Elsewhere almost a decade ago we were immediately curious, his New York City Swara album was inspired by his immersion in the classical music traditions in India when he studied in Mumbai. That he'd also played in a Greek band, a Japanese club and in a New Orleans band made him of great interest. We had him... > Read more
Joy Comes in the Morning
Ralph Towner: At First Light (ECM/digital outlets)
7 Apr 2023 | 1 min read
Acoustic guitar master Ralph Towner has been on the prestigious ECM for more than five decades, his debut for the label back in 1972 with Trios/Solos. On that album for some pieces he had bassist Glenn Moore, tabla player Colin Walcott and oboe player Paul McCandless of the band Oregon which he'd founded a couple of years previous. Oregon – 30 albums listed on Towner's website... > Read more
Danny Boy
Neill Duncan with The Devil's Gate Outfit: Phantom Tones (KiwiJahzz/bandcamp)
25 Mar 2023 | 1 min read
Saxophonist Neill Duncan (who died in December 2021) was a mainstay of Wellington's Braille collective in the Eighties, that revolving door of musicians who appeared in various line-ups as different bands, although all sharing similar members and an experimental jazz ethos. Which means Duncan's name would be familiar from the Primitive Art Group, Four Volts, Six Volts, Rabbitlock... > Read more
Phantom Tones
Dixon Nacey/Kevin Haines: Conversations (digital outlets)
15 Mar 2023 | 1 min read
Guitarist Dixon Nacey and bassist Kevin Haines should be familiar to Elsewhere readers, particularly from Rattle albums with drummer Ron Samsom which we have reviewed. But here – in part prompted by some teaching research Nacey was doing for MAINZ where he now teaches after a period at the University of Auckland – they step out as a duo on an album with an appropriate title.... > Read more
THE JAZZ CONUNDRUM (2023): At the interface of styles
12 Mar 2023 | 3 min read
Programmers and promoters of jazz know the problem: it's “jazz”. The word defies convenient definition: for some it's swinging entertainment, for others an intellectual art demanding studious consideration. Jazz is also a minority music, so festival organisers frequently schedule pop and rock bands on their programme, particularly those appealing to an older demographic.... > Read more
THE FOX REPORT (2023): Crazy like a Rodger
11 Mar 2023 | 1 min read | 1
Few New Zealand musicians have pursued their career with more tenacity than trombonist, composer and teacher Rodger Fox who celebrates half a century as a professional musician. Fox has lead his Rodger Fox Big Band, a training ground for talent, for more than four decades. A few years ago a concert audience in Auckland's Bruce Mason Centre was asked how many had passed through the band's... > Read more
Bloom/Helias/Previte: 2.3.23 (digital outlets)
5 Mar 2023 | 1 min read
Saxophonist Jane Ira Bloom and bassist Mark Helias have been on something of a roll lately with their 2021 album Some Kind of Tomorrow (one of that year's best at Elsewhere). Elsewhere singled out her duet of the same year Tues Days with drummer Allison Miller and also the earlier Wild Lines with Helias, pianist Dawn Clement and drummer Bobby Previte where they improvised on poems... > Read more
Gumshoe
Mark Lockett: Swings and Roundabouts (Thick Records/digital outlets)
30 Jan 2023 | 1 min read
As someone who has listened to the great Ornette Coleman for decades but heard very little of his influence in jazz in the Eighties and Nineties, it's pleasing that in the 21st century there seems to have seen a real interest. Today his shapeshifting and bouncing melodic lines from the late Fifties/early Sixties seem to be as much an influence – possibly even more so – than... > Read more
G&T
Ezra Collective: Where I'm Meant to Be (digital outlets)
4 Dec 2022 | 1 min read
Much current London jazz revolves around prime-mover/saxophonist Shabaka Hutchings and his bands The Comet is Coming, The Ancestors and Sons of Kemet. And fellow travellers like the all-women Nérija which includes spellbinding guitarist Shirley Tetteh and saxophonist Nubya Garcia (whose 2020 solo album Source is exceptional). This music pulls from classic Sixties jazz but hauls in... > Read more
Justin Purtill, Leo Genovese, Sean Conly: Simple Twist (577/digital outlets)
5 Nov 2022 | <1 min read
This is an unexpected alt.folk-cum-jazz album from New York's edgy 577 Records which most often delivers challenging and/or beautiful free jazz. Singer/guitarist Purtill is joined by pianist Genovese and bassist Conly for his aching socio-political Sweet Liberty, Dylan's Simple Twist of Fate and Mississippi John Hurt's Spike Driver's Blues, among other pieces distinguished by his weathered... > Read more
Spike Driver's Blues
The Comet is Coming: Hyper-Dimensional Expansion (Impulse!/digital outlets)
10 Oct 2022 | 1 min read
Of all the British outfits in the new wave of jazz-meets-grime/Afro-futurism/hip-hop/rock/whathaveyou, The Comet is Coming generated the most excitement. Saxophonist Shabaka Hutchings was very much a mover and shaper of the London jazz scene and when alongside drummer Betamax and synth player Danalogue some real magic happened. That said, and although Elsewhere was enthusiastic about... > Read more
Rodger Fox Big Band: Plays Tuwhare (digital outlets)
2 Oct 2022 | <1 min read
After half a century, trombonist and band leader Rodger Fox still manages to be creative and inventive in his constant refreshing of his band's catalogue. Earlier this year they explored the music of Dave Dobbyn and here the great poet Hone Tuwhare's work – born 100 years ago – is the inspiration for 10 pieces. Those unfamiliar with Tuwhare's work – this writer has only... > Read more
Miles Davis (written by Rodger Fox)
Edward Ware: Taking Shostakovich Out (bandcamp)
15 Sep 2022 | 1 min read
The seemingly provocative title on this album isn't some retro-revisionism from within the damaged Politburo. Rather it is New York/Barcelona-based ex-pat drummer/conceptualist Edward Ware – with soprano sax player Chris Kelsey – taking various fugues by the great Russian composer into that out-there world of jazz improv-cum-exploration. And also out of the context of his... > Read more
DAVE MEET RODGER, RODGER MEET DAVE (2022): Here for big band Bliss and beyond
5 Aug 2022 | 2 min read
Dave Dobbyn was an excellent case study for my university singer-songwriter students, an artist who illustrated how they could shift between genres, lyrical approaches and song arrangements . . . and yet still sound like themselves. In his first decade Dobbyn went from the booze-bar rock of Bliss through metaphorically interesting songs like Whaling and Outlook For Thursday and along the... > Read more
Darren Pickering Small Worlds: Volume One (Rattle/digital outlets)
1 Aug 2022 | <1 min read
The name of this group lead by Christchurch pianist Darren Pickering is accurate because here are sometimes small worlds of quiet, intimately detailed pieces for quartet (guitarist Mitch Dwyer, bassist Peter Fleming and drummer Mitch Thomas) which open with the very inviting and understated Simple Ballad. It's an elegance revisited later on In the Know(ere) and the length, exploratory Ixtapa... > Read more