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Mary Halvorson: About Ghosts
by Doug Collette
Since Mary Halvorson began her prolific affiliation with Nonesuch Records, she has refused to repeat herself except with a purpose. The simultaneous release of Amaryllis & Belladonna (Nonesuch Records, 2022) was the precursor to the expansive Cloudward (Nonesuch Records, 2024), while About Ghosts represents a retrenchment, albeit a productive one. On five of these eight cuts, the identical Amaryllis Sextet that appeared on the latter LP interacts smoothly with guest saxophonists Immanuel Wilkins and Brian Settles. Such synchrony ...
Continue ReadingAdam O'Farrill: For These Streets
by John Sharpe
With For These Streets, trumpeter and composer Adam O'Farrill presents a sharply contoured, richly imagined statement for mid-sized band--his most complete vision to date. Drawing on an eclectic range of influences, from 1930s-era music, literature and film to the rhythms of contemporary urban life, O'Farrill leads a wily crew of his peers through a program that moves with narrative cohesion. Though not a suite in the formal sense, the album unfolds like one, the pieces linked by emotional throughlines and ...
Continue ReadingAdam O'Farrill: For These Streets
by Mark Corroto
Trumpeter and composer Adam O'Farrill distills a heady mix of inspirations into For These Streets, the debut release from his new octet. Drawing on music, literature and the ambiance of the 1930s, the album reflects his immersion in the era--Henry Miller's prose, Charlie Chaplin's City Lights, and the sonic worlds of Stravinsky, Ravel, Carlos Chávez and Kurt Weill. None of this background is necessary to appreciate the music, nor is it mentioned in the packaging. But knowing it adds a ...
Continue ReadingMary Halvorson: About Ghosts
by Mike Jurkovic
It has become more than an urban legend that Brooklyn's genius-in-residence Mary Halvorson is supernaturally up to something. Some new route around something else. On her second resiliency test of the year--her first, the fiery Bone Bells (Pyroclastic, 2025) alongside hot-house pianist Sylvie Courvoisier still rattles the playlist--Halvorson's About Ghosts tells of wide open spaces with a wide open lens. Its intricate inner architecture is so comfortably ethereal that you sway freely within its charm and frenzy. About ...
Continue ReadingAdam O'Farrill: For These Streets
by Angelo Leonardi
Con questo nuovo disco Adam O'Farrill scrive una delle pagine più avvincenti del 2025, confermando di non essere solo un magistrale trombettista ma un compositore d'alto spessore anche per medio organico. Nei quattro album col quartetto Stranger Days, ha dimostrato di saper integrare con coerenza le forme del post bop degli anni sessanta con gli sviluppi delle avanguardie successive e in questo ottetto stellare prosegue, ampliando lo spettro armonico e timbrico con l'uso di vibrafono (Patricia Brennan), chitarra ...
Continue ReadingArturo O'Farrill & The Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra: Mundoagua: Celebrating Carla Bley
by Angelo Leonardi
Scoperto da Carla Bley nel 1979, quand'era ancora studente diciannovenne, e rimasto nei suoi gruppi per tre anni, Arturo O'Farrill ne celebra la memoria con quest'album ambizioso, che raccoglie due sue suites ed una ("Blue Palestine") che lui stesso commissionò alla grande autrice e bandleader nel 2019, quattro anni prima della sua morte. “Mundoagua" la composizione che apre il disco è stata scritta per commemorare l'Anno dell'acqua ed ha avuto la sua anteprima al Miller Theater di New ...
Continue ReadingArturo O'Farrill: Mundoagua: Celebrating Carla Bley
by Jack Bowers
Mundoagua, the latest album by composer and pianist Arturo O'Farrill's Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra, is subdivided into three suites, the second of which is the four-movement “Blue Palestine," written and arranged by another celebrated composer and pianist, Carla Bley, a leading light in the avant-garde free jazz movement of the mid-twentieth century, who died of cancer in October 2023. The opening suite, “Mundoagua," commissioned by the Columbia University School of the Arts in 2018 to commemorate the ...
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