Jazz in Elsewhere
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Miles Davis: Merci Miles! Live at Vienne (digital outlets)
2 Aug 2021 | 1 min read | 3
The mercurial directions in trumpeter Miles Davis' career frequently confounded jazz writers. In the mid Seventies one announced Davis' output after the mid-Sixties as of little interest, thereby dismissing Davis' innovative In a Silent Way (1969) and the game-changing Bitches Brew (70). Another wrote of In A Silent Way, “It was like finding a raised... > Read more
Jake Baxendale and Jasmine Lovell-Smith: Sanctuary (Paint Box/digital outlets)
2 Aug 2021 | 1 min read
The title of this album lead by saxophonists Jake Baxendale and Jasmine Lovell-Smith became prescient when the world dived into various lockdowns. The two three-part suites here -- Baxendale's Whitman-inspired Leaves of Grass and Lovell-Smith's title piece reflecting on her return to New Zealand after years abroad – were all conceived before those events but were recorded in a window... > Read more
Leaves of Grass Suite: Opening
Don Cherry: The Summer House Sessions (Blank Forms/digital outlets)
24 Jul 2021 | 1 min read | 1
Trumpeter Don Cherry – step-father of Neneh and father to Eagle Eye – was right there in the avant-garde jazz movement on albums in the Fifties with Ornette Coleman (the presciently titled Something Else!!!, Tomorrow is the Question!, The Shape of Jazz to Come and Free Jazz among them). He had a long association with Coleman (one of his sons is David Ornette... > Read more
Auckland Jazz Orchestra: East of the Sun (AJO/bandcamp)
19 Jul 2021 | 1 min read
With CD sales in free-fall and jazz a minority music, why would the AJO (with singer Caitlin Smith) even bother with a professionally packaged, gatefold sleeve release like this? Yet this is much more than a vanity project but a warm showcase of these talented players recorded over a couple of days and mastered by Steve Garden (of Rattle). In the line-up are name players familiar... > Read more
Harbour Lights
Toine Thys/Orlando: Orlando (Hypnote/digital outlets)
1 Jul 2021 | 1 min read
It's a wee bit confusing: It seems this jazz quarter called Orlando but it is lead by saxophonist Toine Thys who also gets his name on the cover, but on digital outlets the album title is Orlando so . . . And while this came out digitally late last year we bring it to attention now because the French-Belgian group just won the Octave de la Musique jazz award in Belgium, and only now... > Read more
NBQ: New Bop Quintet (Manu/digital outlets)
9 Jun 2021 | 1 min read
Although jazz morphs and changes as it assimilated other styles and sources, there are few key places it pivots back to, notably the classic bebop era of Monk, Miles and others. That style – born in the Forties and dominant for two decades thereafter – threw out geniuses like Charlie Parker, Dexter Gordon, Dizzy Gillespie, Sonny Rollins and many, many more who... > Read more
3Up/3Down
TIMO LASSY and TEPPO MAKYNEN, INTRODUCED (2021): A jazz journey in the far north
7 Jun 2021 | 3 min read
A man walks into a record store . . . and that is his first mistake. My excuse was to buy the new Crowded House album on vinyl (always curious to hear what those Finns are up to) and ending up with even more Fins . . . a single album and a double live by the free jazz duo of saxophonist Timo Lassy and drummer Teppo Makynen from Helsinki. Also on handsome vinyl. It was a costly 20... > Read more
Richard X Bennett: RXB3 (Ubuntu Music/digital outlets)
31 May 2021 | 1 min read
New York-based pianist Richard X Bennett has appeared previously at Elsewhere (and was the subject of some Elsewhere Art) because he has been very different, right from our first hearing of his album New York City Swara in 2013 on which he played Indian ragas. No mean feat! There were subsequent albums which we wrote about and even had him answer a questionnaire... > Read more
Olivier Holland: Olivier Holland's GJAZZ 5 (Time Zone/digital outlets)
30 May 2021 | 1 min read
The provenance of this shape-shifting and often ultra-cool post-bop double album is interesting of itself. German-born and internationally acclaimed bassist/composer Olivier Holland is in the very successful jazz department in the School of Music at the University of Auckland where one of the featured saxophonists here, Roger Manins, also teaches. (Holland and Manins are in the group Dog,... > Read more
Sons of Kemet: Black to the Future (Impulse!/digital outlets)
17 May 2021 | 1 min read
We'll be frank, the previous album Your Queen is a Reptile by this much acclaimed British jazz ensemble (around the peripatetic saxophonist Shabaka Hutchings) didn't quite do it for us. Got the politics and culture, admired the ensemble playing but, as we said, on a musical level it seemed to pull back when its antecedents would have soared. That however seems to be Hutchings' modus... > Read more
Nik Bärtsch: Entendre (ECM/digital outlets)
3 May 2021 | 1 min read | 1
Swiss pianist Nik Bärtsch has passed our way previously with his electric group Ronin whose Llyria album was in our best of Elsewhere list in 2010. And three years later we wrote equally approvingly (although conceding they were a difficult proposition) about the Ronin live album. As we mentioned previously, coming to an album on ECM has often meant anticipating a frosty... > Read more
Shai Maestro: Human (ECM/digital outlets)
16 Apr 2021 | 1 min read
With a name which befits his accomplishment yet playing which avoids flamboyance, Israeli pianist Shai Maestro found his natural home on the ECM label three years ago with The Dream Thief. Here again he is with fellow Israeli Ofri Nehemya (drums) and Peruvian bassist Jorge Roeder, and now American trumpeter Philip Dizack. With a clear acknowledgement of the American tradition (Hank and... > Read more
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RECOMMENDED RECORD: Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers: Moanin' (Blue Note reissue/Universal)
5 Apr 2021 | 2 min read | 1
One of the greatest of the late Fifties swinging, hard bop albums on the Blue Note label, this album – like the self-titled album The Beatles, known as The White Album, of a decade later – didn't actually have a title. But it became known immediately as Moanin' after pianist Bobby Timmons' arresting, memorable nine minute-plus opening track which put solid funk into jazz.... > Read more
Moanin'
John Key's Jazz Monsters: Dune Dancing (OddMusic30/digital outlets)
29 Mar 2021 | 1 min read
No doubt Auckland keyboard player/composer John Key was delighted when a former prime minister abdicated in favour of golf, travel and commentary from the sidelines. Imagine ringing for a gig and saying, “Hi, this is John Key . . . “ Key's small group Strange Fruit has established a sound reputation over the past couple of decades (and three albums by my... > Read more
Zombie Hop
Lucien Johnson: Wax///Wane (Deluge/digital outlets)
22 Mar 2021 | 1 min read
The hypnotic sound of the opening piece here, Magnificent Moon, on this album under the name of Lucien Johnson – the Wellington-based, global-traveller and highly acclaimed composer/saxophonist – should be persuasive enough for anyone to want to continue. On an album inspired by the phases of the moon and natural phenomena, Johnson and his excellent, empathetic friends (vibes... > Read more
Bro/Henriksen/Rossy: Uma Elmo (ECM/digital outlets)
14 Mar 2021 | 1 min read
Members of this trio – Danish guitarist Jakob Bro, trumpeter Arve Henriksen from Norway and Spanish drummer Jorge Rossy – have appeared at Elsewhere in the past, but never together: Bro played with the late Tomasz Stanko on Dark Eyes, Henriksen we heard way back when we wrote about the Rune Grammofone label out of Norway and Rossy – a longtime member of pianist Brad... > Read more
Cyclone Trio: The Clear Revolution (577 Records/digital outlets)
9 Mar 2021 | 2 min read
Elsewhere tries to be very clear when it come to free jazz/experimental music. (We don't say “avant-garde” because it's been "avant" for about 80 years now.) When we think it might be beyond the endurance of those who either don't know the idiom or is especially demanding for even those who do, we say so. However, the recent albums by Cooper-Moore and Stephen... > Read more
RECOMMENDED RECORD: Cannonball Adderley: Somethin' Else (Blue Note/Universal)
22 Feb 2021 | 2 min read
The most commonly held opinion about this classic Blue Note album from 1958 by alto saxophonist Cannonball Adderley -- his only album on the label -- is that he is outshone by his famous sideman Miles Davis (who wrote the bluesy title track). That's not entirely true but -- because Adderley was in Davis' band at this time -- there's no doubt Davis is on excellent form and very much the... > Read more
Dancing in the Dark
Jane Ira Bloom/Mark Helias: Some Kind of Tomorrow (bandcamp)
15 Feb 2021 | <1 min read
Demanding times require new solutions and for soprano player Bloom and bassist Helias that meant duetting by the internet when their worlds were in separate lockdown. Not that you know of the physical separation from the evidence of the 11 pieces here. In the past Bloom has created conceptual albums but here with Helias with whom she has played off and on since the late 2000s, we are in... > Read more
Travelling Deep
MPT Trio: Volume 1 (577 Records/digital outlets)
2 Feb 2021 | 1 min read
Those who have read Elsewhere's previous reviews of albums on New York's 577 Records will be aware that the labels release can often be challenging free jazz. This debut by the MPT Trio – drummer Francisco Mela, tenor player Hery Paz and guitarist Juanma Trujillo – is certainly in that zone, but . . . The buoyant opener Calipso (sic) has the kind of bounce and warm... > Read more