Articles by Frank Housh
Linda May Han Oh: Music In The Moment
by Frank Housh
Linda May Han Oh is one of jazz music's most innovative artists. I first encountered her in 2015 when she played The Art of Jazz with the Dave Douglas Quintet at Buffalo's Albright Knox Art Gallery. In the decade following she has released four albums for Biophilia Records and worked with luminaries such as art hirahara, Vijay Iyer, and Pat Metheny. Strange Heavens features Ambrose Akinmusire (trumpet) and Tyshawn Sorey (drums) from Akinmusire's Honey From A Winter Stone ...
Continue ReadingBrad Mehldau: Ride into the Sun
by Frank Housh
Elliott Smith (1969-2003) recorded six solo studio albums and was acclaimed for poignant, sophisticated songwriting and reedy, melodious voice. Tragically, he suffered from mental health issues and substance abuse throughout his life. On October 1, 2003 Smith died of two stab wounds to his chest. While initial media reports said the fatal wounds were self-inflicted, the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner refused to endorse suicide as a cause of death. Toxicology tests found no illegal or controlled substances in his ...
Continue ReadingMeet Frank Housh
by Frank Housh
I currently live in: Buffalo, New York I joined All About Jazz in: February 2025 Why did you decide to contribute to All About Jazz? Because it's the best damn jazz publication on the internet. How do you contribute to All About Jazz? I do interviews, review concerts and albums, and write the occasional essay. What is your musical background? I began college studying classical guitar but eventually ended up in law ...
Continue ReadingKokoroko: Tuff Times Never Last
by Frank Housh
Kokoroko's sophomore album is cool. Cool as the other side of the pillow, cool like floating on top of the deep blue ocean, cool like the Fonz. Kokoroko may be properly classified within the “Afrobeat" jazz subgenre which mixes West African rhythms with jazz harmony. Its sound also includes a heavy dose of “highlife," traditional Ghanaian music that adopted instruments from colonial military bands. It was brought to America by jazz great Randy Weston in his 1963 album ...
Continue ReadingFred Hersch: A Lifetime Of Meditation At The Piano
by Frank Housh
Fred Hersch has spent nearly seven decades mediating at the piano. In his candid memoir, Good Things Happen Slowly: A Life In And Out Of Jazz (Crown Archetype Press, 2017), Hersch described how he creates music. He wrote: I sit down, settle onto the piano stool, and see what kind of mood I'm in. Sometimes when playing with my trio I will ask them what they feel like starting with--a nice surprise for me, as ...
Continue Reading2025 Rochester International Jazz Festival
by Frank Housh
Now in its 22nd year, the Rochester International Jazz Festival is one of North America's finest jazz festivals. On Monday, June 23 I made the one hour from Buffalo and parked adjacent to the street hosting a makeshift food court. June 23 was one of the hottest days of the year in the Genesee River Valley, so music lovers were licking ice cream cones and holding cold, aluminum cans against their necks. I walked past the ...
Continue ReadingChris Cheek: Songs Of Inspiration And Atonement
by Frank Housh
Chris Cheek's Keepers of the Eastern Door (Analog Tone Factory, 2025) was inspired by the suffering and resilience of Native Americans. Cheek grew up in the area of Cahokia Mounds World Heritage & State Park, the largest pre-Columbian site north of Mexico. In his book 1491: New Revelations Of The Americas Before Columbus (Knopf, 2005), Charles C. Mann wrote: Anyone who traveled up the Mississippi in 1100 AD would have seen it looming in the distance: ...
Continue ReadingTaj Mahal & Keb' Mo': Room On The Porch
by Frank Housh
In 2017 blues legend Taj Mahal and Keb' Mo' recorded TajMo, (Concord Records), which won the Grammy for Best Contemporary Blues Album. Eight years later, the two follow up with Room On The Porch, released May 23, 2025, also on Concord Records. Its ten tracks feel like a cool dive into a swimming hole, long forgotten by the crowds posing by the hotel pool. The album begins with the title song's shuffling welcome. Taj Mahal said, “That started ...
Continue ReadingThe Emmet Cohen Trio At Buffalo’s 'Art Of Jazz'
by Frank Housh
The Emmet Cohen TrioBuffalo AKG Art Museum Auditorium Art of Jazz Buffalo, NYMay 19, 2025 The Emmet Cohen Trio closed the 2025 “Art of Jazz" Season with a high-energy performance featuring dynamic interplay and a dive into jazz history. In 2019 Emmet Cohen received the American Pianists Association's Cole Porter Fellowship, accelerating a career trajectory that four years ago led “All About Jazz" writer Zachary Weg to comment, “[t]hirty years old and ...
Continue ReadingJo-Yu Chen: Rendezvous - Jazz Meets Beethoven, Tchaikovsky & More
by Frank Housh
New York-based pianist and composer Jo-Yu Chen treats the great composers like most jazz musicians treat the Great American Songbook: a familiar musical foundation upon which to build a musical style. Chen trained at Juilliard but was seduced by jazz's siren song. Her first four albums: Obsession (Sony Music, 2011), Incomplete Soul (Sony Music, 2012), Stranger (Sony Music, 2014) and Savage Beauty (Sony Music, 2019) featured her compositions before she engaged the classical canon with Schubert & Mozart: ...
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