Jazz in Elsewhere

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

Cooper-Moore and Stephen Gauci: Conversations, Vol 1 (577 Records/digital outlets)

7 Oct 2020 | 1 min read

No one would say free jazz is easy and perhaps the case can be made that it should by definition be difficult. It is here, because with this duo the listener just has to go with it, clinging on as the players follow their instincts into furious flights of saxophone passages and stentorian piano or down blind alleys, creating dialogues or competing monologues, going into... > Read more

THELONIOUS MONK, DISCOVERED (2020): Not a “lost” recording, but one we never knew of

20 Sep 2020 | 3 min read | 1

The story is so unexpected and unusual that it just has to be true: Thelonious Monk and his group playing at a high school in Palo Alto, Northern California in October '68 at a concert organised by a 16-year old fan . . . and the concert being recorded by the janitor. And until recently no one knew the recording existed, not even Monk researcher Robin D G Kelley who wrote the magisterial... > Read more

Nubya Garcia: Source (Concord/digital outlets)

6 Sep 2020 | 1 min read

From this distance and just relying on recordings, Britain's vibrant, contemporary jazz scene appears to pivot around large London ensembles, sometimes with shifting memberships and often with Shabaka Hutchings somewhere central or as a facilitator. Among Elsewhere's favourite albums from this exciting milieu – of those that we have heard – however are Blume by... > Read more

Jimmy Heath: Love Letter (Verve/digital outlets)

19 Aug 2020 | <1 min read

When the great jazz saxophonist Jimmy Heath died in January this year at 93, one of the final connections with that early age of the bebop of Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie (not to mention Miles Davis when he replaced John Coltrane in Davis' band in the late Fifties) was severed. Although sometimes dismissed as being derivative – a follower not a leader – Heath (whose... > Read more

Jon Balke: Discourses (ECM/digital outlets)

12 Aug 2020 | 1 min read

Norwegian pianist Jon Balke is quite unlike any other on the ECM label. Elsewhere first encountered him about four decades ago when he was in his Twenties and briefly in the Arild Andersen Quartet, but we lost touch with him until his engrossing solo piano outing Book of Velocities in 2006. Then he went off our radar again. He had often melded acoustic piano with sonic effects and... > Read more

Jorma Tapio and Kaski: Aliseen (577 Records/bandcamp)

26 Jul 2020 | 1 min read

Opening with a tough but tender and melodic alto piece (reminiscent of Ornette Coleman's tone on the classic Lonely Woman), the Finnish multi-instrumentalist Jorma Tapio and his band immediately grab attention. That opener Reppurin Laulu – a traditional song from a part of Finland now in Russia – is driven along by the precision playing of drummer Janne Tuomi and bassist Ville... > Read more

Marcin Wasilewski Trio/Joe Lovano: Arctic Riff (ECM/digital outlets)

18 Jul 2020 | <1 min read

Regular readers of Elsewhere's jazz reviews will have encountered pianist Marcin Wasilewski's trio either under their own name or on albums with Tomasz Stanko. The trio's Faithful album was among our best of 2011 releases. And of course tenor saxophonist Joe Lovano has been frequently reviewed (and is interviewed) at Elsewhere. So their first-time pairing on the ECM label should be of... > Read more