Jazz in Elsewhere

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

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

Whisper

Lovano/Crispell/Castaldi: Garden of Expression (ECM/digital outlets)

2 Feb 2021 | <1 min read

Sometimes billed as Trio Tapestry (or Joe Lovano Trio Tapestry), this triumviratee of jazz talent (saxophonist Lovano, pianist Marilyn Crispell an drummer Carmen Castaldi) on this second album for ECM epitomise both the mature elegance and the exploratory freedom these players are capable of across eight originals by the nominal leader. Because of the lightness of Castaldi's touch on the... > Read more

Sabir Mateen: Creation (577 Records/digital outlets)

4 Jan 2021 | 1 min read

Saxophonist Sabir Mateen is 69 and can reflect on a life in improvised music playing alongside greats such as Cecil Taylor, Jemeel Moondoc, Sunny Murray, Henry Grimes and many others who advanced the project of jazz into free jazz. He's also a member of the TEST collective alongside fellow saxophonist Daniel Carter. If free jazz rose in the late Fifties and Sixties, reached a kind of... > Read more

Ella Fitzgerald: The Lost Berlin Tapes (Verve/digital outlets)

19 Dec 2020 | 1 min read

One of the delights of hearing the great Ella Fitzgerald in live recordings is when she forgets the words and just improvises. Her humor – and how appreciative the audience was – are evident. Sometimes the lyrics were simply vehicles for her gift at bending a melody, pulling out notes and the starting point for scatting. But she could also drill down into them, as on the... > Read more

Keith Jarrett: Budapest Concert (ECM/digital outlets)

15 Dec 2020 | 1 min read

At 75, the man whom some would say was among the top five improvising pianists in the last quarter of the 20th century (and the first decade of this) has faced terrible health issues in the past. More than 20 years ago he started suffering from chronic fatigue syndrome and was forced to radically rethink his career and approach to his instrument. It lead to his beautiful, spare The... > Read more

Mikael Tariverdiev: Visions in Black and White (Earth/Fire/Southbound/digital outlets)

9 Nov 2020 | 1 min read

Hardy a household name, probably not even in his native Russia these days, pianist/composer Mikael Tariverdiev – who died in '96 – was a prolific composer of classical music. But he also wrote soundtracks for numerous Russian films and television series. According to his wife Vera who had boxes of her husband's tapes stored in their apartment, he told her many times he... > Read more