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Kirk Knuffke, Anat Fort, Bram de Looze, Bob Wellins & More

by Ludovico Granvassu
Another stack of recent and upcoming albums to soundtrack the week ahead, kicking off with three stunners by Kirk Knuffke, Bram de Looze, and Anat Fort's compelling take on the dreamworld of Paul Motian.Happy listening!Playlist Ben Allison Mondo Jazz Theme (feat. Ted Nash & Pyeng Threadgill)" 0:00 Kirk Knuffke Runs Red" Window (Royal Potato Family) 0:16 Host talks 4:12 Bram de Looze, Thomas Morgan, Hank Roberts, Joey Baron Dduddu (Live)" Live at Brussels Jazz Festival (Edition ...
Continue ReadingJeff Lederer: Guilty?!?!?!

by Mark Corroto
Note to conservative Republicans: stop reading this review now. Note to self: There cannot be but a handful of folks who are both MAGA and jazz and improvised music listeners. Jeff Lederer's Guilty!!! recalls a time when jazz was at the forefront of the zeitgeist. Max Roach, John Coltrane, and Charles Mingus were creating music about and during the civil rights movement. Elsewhere Neil Young was protesting the four dead at Kent State, while Graham Nash was recruiting ...
Continue ReadingJames Brandon Lewis: For Mahalia With Love (Expanded Edition)

by Stefano Merighi
La musica di James Brandon Lewis è potente, assertiva, trascinante. Ma rivela talvolta, sotto lo strato di forza, una sottile e affascinante vulnerabilità emotiva, che rende ancora più ricco il suo discorso compositivo e solistico. Come nel caso di questo scintillante omaggio al mondo espressivo di Mahalia Jackson, che si realizza attraverso memorie familiari, quelle della nonna che ha trasmesso a James questa passione tuttora bruciante. Lewis è una delle voci più convincenti del jazz contemporaneo che non ...
Continue ReadingFrank Carlberg Large Ensemble: Elegy for Thelonious

by Alberto Bazzurro
Dopo aver circumnavigato la musica di Monk in diversi contesti, prevalentemente come pianista in piccoli organici, Frank Carlberg, finlandese di nascita ma newyorchese a tutti gli effetti, affronta in questo suo ultimo, ambizioso lavoro l'ineffabile Thelonious da una prospettiva diversa: dedicandogli una serie di composizioni proprie ispirate a lui e alla sua arte così fuori da ogni ovvietà (non senza scampoli tematici acchiappati al volo e titolazioni spesso molto gustose ed emblematiche, da Scallop's Scallop" a Wrinkle on Trinkle," in ...
Continue ReadingFrank Carlberg Large Ensemble: Elegy for Thelonious

by Jerome Wilson
Pianist Frank Carlberg has been exploring the music of Thelonious Monk for some time, most specifically on his large group album, Monk Dreams, Hallucinations, and Nightmares, (Sunnyside, 2017). This new album has Carlberg returning to the large ensemble format for more Monk investigations, but this time approaching the work in a more splintered and abstract fashion. He does not simply interpret familiar Monk tunes. He writes compositions and arrangements which stitch Monk riffs and ideas into new fabrics, ...
Continue ReadingJames Brandon Lewis: For Mahalia With Love (Expanded Edition)

by Chris May
Not since Oded Tzur's Isabela (ECM, 2022) has a comparably exalted tenor saxophone-led album come along, not until For Mahalia, With Love. Vaultingly great jazz and deep solace for the soul, For Mahalia, With Love was released in late 2023. An annual cycle for albums of this quality is actually a sufficiency, for there is enough in both these, and those that preceded them, to last a listener a lifetime. File next to John Coltrane's Crescent (Impulse!, 1964) and Albert ...
Continue ReadingFrank Carlberg Large Ensemble: Elegy for Thelonious

by Mark Corroto
There was a sardonic saying circulating a few years ago that observed, It's Frank Sinatra's world, we just live in it." While that was a backhanded compliment, tailoring it to the subject of this large ensemble recording, we would call it a commendation. Pianist, composer, and conductor Frank Carlberg is telling us, It's Thelonious Monk's world, and (thank god) we live in it." Carlberg has been a disciple of Monk for decades, recording his music in a piano trio format ...
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